Drift
by denverpopcorn
Summary: A blizzard blows in and shuts down the City. Everyone prepares for a snow day, including Edward and Bella. They each have a life-changing decision to make, but will their sudden confinement cool their passion and force them to face certain truths? E/B,AH
1. The Man Who Wasn't Him

Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

**The Man Who Wasn't Him**

**XxX**

He was in the bathroom filling a glass with water when she woke up. He heard the springy mattress shift with her weight. He twisted the "Hot" knob towards hotter, his glass becoming the color of fog and overflowing.

The man in the mirror, who wasn't him, stared back blankly. It was no longer him who blinked and kept blinking. The man in the mirror gazed back, green eyes flashing like a busted traffic signal.

"Edward?"

He turned the faucet off, drained out the water from his glass, and ignored his scalding fingers. He gripped the porcelain wash basin around the sloped edges with little purchase.

Edward shook his head and breathed in another day. It was just another day.

Clearing his throat and looking away from the man in the mirror that wasn't him, Edward called back to his lover.

His one and only, who was not his to one and only.

She was dressed to leave. Her red winter pea coat hugged her from neck to knee, no hair out of place - a picture of a woman with purpose, facing a man wiping his hands on his boxers.

His apartment was loft-style and bachelor friendly, cozy enough for stranded work paraphernalia, take-out cartons, magazines, and transient love.

His wrought-iron bed sat anchored in the center of the loft, the white sheets banked at the edges, the pillows pressed into the headboard. These were the only hints of her.

She was tucked in and smoothed over like a wrapped present meant for someone else. He knew better than to touch her. Hand on door, he leaned over her, the other hand on her hip.

Lightly, lightly.

Breathing her in one more time.

"When will I see you again?" he stalled with clenched eyes, counting away the panic. He knew the answer to this already, and later that night, he wouldn't recall if she actually pointed at her ring finger and rolled her eyes, or mumbled incoherently about a business trip, or in-laws and people whose names he could never know.

They made plans for phone calls. They made plans until his return.

They were always making plans.

* * *

A/N:

Thank you for reading!

If this burns going down, I promise to add an ice cube to it. It goes down smooth that way. ;)

Heartfelt thanks to Cesca Marie and WriteOnTime for the hand holding and encouragement. I won the beta lottery with these two. I really want to gloat, but that would be rude.


	2. The Chatter

**The Chatter**

**XxX**

Work will come easy for him that morning. The writing will go well. He won't even dress for it.

He can work in his boxers, only donning thick socks to keep the chill from the hardwood floors off his feet. He can rest his feet up on the coffee table, settling in while his laptop whirs.

He wants to write about her and the unmade bed that hogs the bulk of his space. He wants to write of her cinnamon scent left on his shoulder, the last kiss she placed on his closed eyes, the sound of the door shutting, the silence.

He laughs at himself, picturing his editor's eyes bulging in disbelief and later narrowing in exasperation.

When the phone rings, he is halfway finished with the article that sends him away on research. His cell phone, an older model, is loud and tinny. He's either forgotten or neglected to upgrade his plan.

"Where are you now?" asks his brother, Emmett. Their bond reaches beyond the corners of conversation.

"I'm home." Edward, calm in the company of his brother's voice, is used to it.

"Home where? Home, here, or home, Seattle?"

"Home here, Em. Got in last night. How's mom?" As brothers, they are masters of mutual distraction.

"Fine. You know, taking down her Christmas lights months later. I had to go over with the ladder today. Icy as fuck out. There's a storm."

"Yeah?" Edward turns on the television and paces in front of the news channel.

"Better get provisions," says Emmett with a mouthful of food. "I have to go, get things fixed up for mom. Dad's stuck at the ER tonight. See you this weekend?" Emmet is a man tethered to the whims of domesticity.

"Sure. What..."

"Have you told her, yet?"

Edward knew it was a matter of time for Emmett to hijack the call. He pinches his nose and looks out the window. His brother is right; it's looking wicked out there. He wonders if Bella has made it home.

"No. I haven't," his neighbor is shoveling his walk. "What the fuck for?" He mumbles, frowning at the frost on his window.

"What do you mean 'what the fuck for'? Dude. You don't need this, you're not you, man." Emmett thought, after their last conversation, it was a given. Has his brother changed his mind?

"No, Em. I wasn't talking about…" Exasperated at the neighbor and his inability to articulate, he continues with "...never mind. I see what you mean. I know. We talked about it. And talked, and talked," he mumbles to a finish. "I'll do it. I'll break it off. You're right." He has managed to sound convincing even to himself.

"You're right," he repeats, staring at his neighbor bending and lifting at the knees, while the snow accumulates quickly on the walk.

"Right."

**XxX**

The six a.m. weatherman in business-casual dress and accessible stance called for blizzard. The weather girl in the late-morning broadcast repeated this, at every "ten to the hour" in a parka and earmuffs.

Both spoke in inches and feet and precipitation and record-setting hyperboles. "We're looking at a state of emergency by the end of the day, folks." The news was covered in dulcet tones and plastered smiles.

Later that morning, as the flakes fatten the trees, children will be sent away by grateful teachers. Office workers will collectively celebrate the crippled transit system and head back the way they came.

Everyone will talk about it as if the storm could cease in the presence of silence.

There will be calls.  
There will be tweets and status updates.  
There will be flashing tickers on news screens.  
There will be chatter over wires, underground, and across the tubes.

No one finds fault with the snow.

Except Edward.

He has no food in the house and a knock at the door to answer.

* * *

A/N:

Cesca Marie and WriteOnTime are the clean up crew, but I'm messy, so don't blame them if you find fault.


	3. Feed Me

**Feed Me**

**XxX**

Her mascara smudges into laugh lines, cradling smoky eyes. The young snow sparkles off her hair and face. Damp tendrils set loose droplets of water on her coat.

Bella smiles at him and exhales in almost-relief when he answers the door in the same state of undress she left him in. Hours have passed, but the desire to reclaim them overwhelm her.

She had originally stepped out to hail a cab, but none were available. Lingering at a nearby coffee shop, she heard the collective chatter celebrating a snow day.

She bought a coffee and listened to the baristas speak of closing early. Their usual surly moods were on the upswing as they smiled at customers and, like the rest of the City, discussed the pleasures of a snow day.

Looking around the shop, she didn't have to be a mind reader to know their thoughts and whispers.

The pierced barista pulling shots of espresso was thinking of behind-the-counter sex with his co-worker. The petite blonde, coiffed in power-suit fashion, glimmered with anticipation of a relaxing day with her cats. The couple at the window, clearing their table with touching fingers, had eyes for sex.

The snow held promise of debauched indulgence behind closed doors.

Hours of snow stacked up on the swings in the park across the street. She smiled while blowing her coffee cool, thinking of him and his hands.

Rough, they've been to places, inside and outside of her.

The decision was made.

She placed a call, and walked back the way she came.

**XxX**

He wastes no time and has her up against the cold sliding glass doors.

Fingers of winter air tease her neck. Her skin blushes white and pink with every thrust. The gathered frost bites and nips at her back furiously until she comes undone like a snowman. He fucks her until his thighs burn.

When he sets her feet down, his fingers graze her chilled thighs and rub them, as if by extension, he can warm them both.

She chokes back a tiny sob into his chest and masks it with a plea for food.

She is ravenous.

"Feed Me."

**XxX**

Holding hands, they hike the naked city streets to a corner market. She wears his favorite college sweatshirt under her coat. The threadbare hoodie crinkles snugly around her face, thief-like.

The piercing wind makes her eyes glisten.

He buys her chocolate bars, and she laughs when he throws glow-in-the-dark condoms into their hand basket. Waltzing up and down the aisles of the bright store, they pick up as much as their arms can carry.

In front of the frozen food case, stalled by their reflections in the glass, he makes up a tale about feasts of fancy, whispering a story of two children setting off into the woods, fighting off evil winter sprites and coming upon a sprawling buffet.

"A buffet of what," she says to his reflection, with a tang of cynicism.

"Of this," he motions toward the candy aisle.

"Powdered donuts, ropes of Red Vines, ginger ale." He throws it all in. "Chili hot dogs, Vienna sausages, corn chips, potato chips, ranch dip, bean dip, cheese dip, ice cream, and juice."

He grabs her by the waist. She grabs another basket.

At the counter, she points behind the cashier and adds antacids to their purchase.

* * *

A/N:

I like candy.

Thanks to Cesca Marie and WriteOnTime for not letting go.


	4. Whiskey

**Whiskey**

**XxX**

They sit up at either end of his bed. Nude and sated, post-sex and snack food, Edward absentmindedly rubs her foot. Occasionally, he finds and eats a stray Red Hot off the sheets.

They share the covers.

"Bella, bo bella, her feet do smella..." he sings into her toes with a smile. She chuckles but pulls her foot back.

"I was singing to that foot. Give it back." He snatches it by the ankle.

"My feet don't 'smella', Edward," she says in a playful huff and sits up straighter, letting the sheet settle around her waist, exposing round and heavy breasts.

Her lack of modesty, long since fucked away, makes his stomach clench and the back of his eyes prick. The wanting settles low in his spine. He stares for lack of air.

"Do you remember when we first met," she asks, watching his finger glide over the lacquer of a red toenail.

"Sure, I do." He sighs. "You always bring it up." He puts her foot down and works his own under the covers, sneaking its way toward her.

"I believe," he says as the sole of his foot finds her in-between, "you called me a dick." He rests his foot at the base of her wet fuzz and applies a well-known pressure.

"You're silly." Without thinking, she guides his foot further into her. She hums.

Both sets of eyes grow big, and after a surprised pause, they laugh. She swats at his leg like she meant to do, but he doesn't move it. And she doesn't tell him to.

"That's because you were arrogant," she says, getting back on topic, and remembering it her way. "You had so many girls throwing themselves at you that night. But you talked to me. I don't know why." She casts the line out, hoping for a tug. It does not come.

Resting her head back, she focuses on the blades of the ceiling fan slowly slicing the edges of stray light.

Her memories of that night flitter.

Edward wishes she would talk about anything else, but he is used to obliging her nostalgia.

"One even asked if I wanted to go to a strip club with her and her friends." He smirks in affected, masculine pride.

"Gross, Edward. A strip club, really?" She looks to the left of him. The scruff on his face is intimate. He hasn't shaved and looks worn in.

She knows it is her doing and undoing all at once.

"You didn't see me leave with them, did you? As I recall, you came up to the bar under the pretense of ordering a drink when you had a waitress at your table all night. Think I didn't notice?" He wiggles his toes, making them slippery.

She holds him still.

"I did." She smiles and luxuriates in the memory. "I thought I was smooth. I know. But the drinks gave me courage and I couldn't look away, and I couldn't…couldn't…" She gasps at the appalling intrusion of tears.

The six-month-old memory, a squeezebox compressing in her chest, vibrates disconcertedly through her body. It startles.

"Hey." He pulls his foot back and sits up on his knees, scooting forward and folding her into an unsure embrace.

"No, don't," he whispers, wishing he wasn't touching her or soothing her. He desperately wants her to stop crying. She is not the sole owner of this moment.

"I'll get us water," he says, and loosens his hold abruptly. Tugging on long pajama bottoms, he edges off the bed.

He doesn't look back to see her chin on her knees, her eyes now a watery calm. "I'm sorry," she whispers. And he hears.

"Don't." He has no more to contribute. "Be back."

After a few minutes of listening to him rummage through cupboards, she accepts a drink of water, a shot of Jameson, and more water to trail the fire in her belly.

* * *

A/N:

Thanks for reading. Also, my gratitude goes out to Cesca Marie and WriteOnTime.


	5. Karaoke

**Karaoke**

**XxX**

(Bella: 6 months earlier)

"Karaoke?"

It's not Bella's thing, but she's not turning down a Friday night with Rose. Before getting out of the car, she checks her lipstick in the visor mirror – Cherry Frost is in full swing.

"Sure. I won't make you get up and sing. C'mon, it's dumb and different."

Bella pats herself down one more time. Finally, after all these years, she can wear her favorite sneakers without judgment or expectation. She's not a kid anymore but she has the body that's five years behind in age. She's not stupid and takes advantage with the skinny jeans and a thin, v-neck tee.

It's a change she's getting used to. It feels good but it doesn't stop the nerves. Only when Rose holds her hand, and pulls her in does she become centered.

The bar is crowded and reeks of recklessness. Like any bar, the girl-to-guy ratio benefits no one. The pick-up lines are all the same. The moves are borrowed, recycled and eventually accepted.

Two camps drink their drinks - those who know how to play the game, and those who will bluff their way until last call.

Bella and Rose take seats at a tall round-top near the stage where the lanky and dreadlocked DJ sets up the mike. A top-forty mix plays in the background.

"You okay?" Rose, out of character, has been walking on eggshells with her long-time friend. It's a rare day that Rose keeps her opinions to herself, but Bella's marriage has tested the elasticity of their friendship.

Rose has learned when to pull and when to let go. Tonight, it is Bella's turn to let go.

"Yeah." There's that fidgeting with her ring again. It's like a third limb, she's not even aware that she still has it on, thinks Rose, but instead says, "What are we drinking?"

The waitress shows up and Bella is not ready with her order. Ordering drinks, and playing it quick and cool, in the social spotlight is a habit from an older era.

She is rusty.

She's forgotten her drink of choice and fumbles with an answer. Rose is quick, and orders for both of them; taking the reins before her friend sinks into insecurity again.

After ordering their gin and tonics, the noise increases, the room bounces with music and Bella people watches. It is too loud for true conversation.

She notices the long, oak bar at the other end of the room. Behind the bartender, bottles of liquid greens, pinks, amber and gold line the shelves.

The seats at the bar are empty, save for one. Everyone else prefers to mingle around table tops and by the stage.

"Bottoms up, B." Rose says with a reassuring grin.

They pick up their glasses of cold and clear forget-it juice. Bella's smile reaches her ears, makes her face flush. Her entire body relaxes.

This is it. This is where she should be, not at home, waiting for the door to open.

Yes. This is it.

"To you, B. Trust. You'll be okay." And that bit of Rose-love nearly tests Bella's mascara. It is a genuine and welcome toast.

They tip back and drink.

**XxX**

She's been sneaking looks at him all night. She's not hiding it from Rose. "Switch seats with me, c'mon." The gin and tonics have teased out the brave in her along with her inner Mick Jagger. Guys have been stepping up to them all night and declaring the next song is theirs, "We'll sing whatever you want, pretty ladies."

They've managed to fend off the more aggressive come-ons. The ring idly plays its part.

Bella tries on her flirt suit, taking advantage of their smiles with requests for every Rolling Stones song in the DJ's playlist.

After, one _Sympathy for the Devil_ and two _Paint it Blacks_ later, she is done belting out lyrics that set memories aflame.

Her brown, cat-like eyes zero in on the quiet man at the end of the bar. He's been sitting there most of the night, looking up at the large flat screen mounted behind the bar and ignoring the scene.

She's memorized his profile. He's dressed entirely in black.

On occasion, he'll turn his head and she'll catch deep eyes. He has nice hair, dark and reddish under the warm bar lights. It's dismissive of the tamed and molded fashion that surrounds him.

During the caterwauling of a 'so you think you can sing' contestant, a burly hunk of a friend sits next to him. When they hug, it is like family and not the postured welcome of male acquaintances.

She watches as they alternate between the television and conversation, heads leaned in – one dark, one burnished bronze. A sports channel is on.

They're in their own world, oblivious to her stare and every other hot-blooded woman inspired by the two handsome men. She watches when other women approach. Every one of them, sent away politely.

"Stop being so obvious." Rose snaps her well-manicured fingers in Bella's face.

Looking behind her shoulder, Rose's understanding is immediate. "Oh, shit."

"Yeah." Bella's lost her words, she's flustered just looking at him. She drinks more.

"You ready for that?" Rose says, contemplating her friend. The booze has loosened her tongue and she can't help letting out a small jibe to test the waters; both girls used to tease each other mercilessly.

"What about Jake, B?" The waters have been murky lately, though.

"What about him?" Bella's jaw tightens, her sudden irritation is new, but it's there now and she cools herself with it. She chews the inside of her bottom lip.

"If you do this," Rose says gesturing at the object of Bella's fascination, "how are you going to be tomorrow?"

"I'll be fine." This talk is old and now she's anxious, ready.

Had her friend not acknowledged it, Bella may have ignored him the rest of the night. But Rose, familiar with Bella's buttons, is glad that her comments have opened a door.

"Let's not go there now, okay?" She holds up her empty glass at Rose and asks her if she wants another one.

"Sure. One more." She is slightly contrite about bringing up Jake, but Bella's little fire is a lovely sight.

"I'll go up and order. Can't see the waitress," says Bella.

With that feeble excuse, she sidles up to the bar next to the stranger, his friend having left.

**XxX**

Never has Bella experienced the charge of anticipation like she does in this very moment. Never will she forget it.

Bellying up to the bar, between a stool and this striking man, her heart beats in her mouth. Her throat is dry. She is dwarfed by his presence, as if a cloud passed over the moon. His heat darkens around her.

"What can I get you, darling." Her mind, tricky, fools her for a petrifying minute. She thinks it's him, but it's not, and again she fumbles in the questioning eyes of the bartender. Trying to be cool, she improvises on an old, flirty phrase from her college days.

"Um, what kind of shots do you like to make?" She says, with an unnatural sideways smile. Her confidence wavers.

She's entirely my type, thinks the bartender, but I'm in the weeds, so if she's asking, "Whiskey." He's curt, but he's working the bar alone and the line is deep with hyped-up revelers. He's hidden the blender under the counter.

"Oh," not what she was expecting. "Then, um, I'll take a double?"

"I'll have the same, Mike."

It's him, and his voice is a room she steps into eagerly.

Carefully, he reaches an arm around her. She stiffens: the stress of wondering what he's doing coils within.

He pulls a stool out and offers it to her, "Sit?"

"Um, sure. Thanks. I guess he'll be a while before he gets back."

Mike has moved on – nodding at orders, pulling draughts, and closing tabs.

"I don't believe we've met. I'm Edward Cullen." He holds a hand out to her and it takes her too many beats to reconcile his formality in this meat-market.

His smile is unburdened and lively, with intense green eyes.

"I'm Bella." Her speech is coming back, the headiness loosens its grip, her breathing regulates. Taking a secret breath, she shakes his hand and revels in the urge to wrap it around her in a warm hug.

He smiles and turns back to the TV screen as if they've been sitting together, doing just that, all the while.

Rose walks up and hugs her friend from behind. "Bella, I have to take off," she whispers to her friend conspiratorially.

"You okay?" asks Rose while slyly eyeing Edward with admiration.

Bella sinks into her friend's arms and nods her head, breathing in the smell of Rose for courage.

"Thanks. I'll cab it. Call you tomorrow?" her voice is weak but determined.

"Yeah, babe. Call me." Rose wants to say more, but leaves it. It will play out how it's meant to play out, and the stress of Bella's life was taxing even for her.

"Your friend seems nice," Edward says, putting an arm on the back of her stool. His black button-up is rolled at the sleeves and his arm, sinewy and aggressive with muscle and hair, makes her blush.

"Did you lose your ride?"

"Yeah. It's okay. I don't have anywhere to be."

"Oh, no?" He frowns with a little smile. She cocks her head, about to ask what has him bothered, when their shots are placed in front of them, followed by two rock glasses of ice water.

"Oh, I didn't order…"

"It goes down better that way. Mike knows how I take it. You'll like it. Add a little water to it or an ice cube. It will help smooth it out."

Bella watches his finger fish out an ice cube from his glass and plunk it into her whiskey. It's no less familiar than having him cut her steak.

Angling his long torso over her slight frame, he brings his glass up for a toast.

"Cheers," she pipes, recognizing the gesture coming toward her.

"Nostrovia." And he drinks half of the whiskey before setting it down. The remainder is to be nursed slowly, enjoyed sip by sip.

The drink does go down smoothly. So smoothly, she drinks half as well. The fire inside blooms and takes charge.

"You're right," she laughs, breathless and newly spirited. The whiskey works its hands on her tense muscles.

"What does 'nostrovia' mean?" His eyes are engaging and she talks right into them. It's her defense against staring at his lips.

"It means, to good health. It's Polish or Czech, I'm never sure."

And the conversation flows.

She finds out he's a travel writer for a magazine she overlooks at airports, hidden at the bottom of the shelves. His job sends him on mountain-climbing expeditions and impressive outdoor adventures. He's excited about a new assignment and speaks to her like someone pulled tape away from his mouth.

He's making her laugh, and play with her hair, and fidget with her lip.

His life is fascinating, she thinks, like hers used to be. He asks her questions about it. She digs for her best, thrilling stories in boxes long since stuffed away, in dusty photo albums deteriorating in storage.

Internally, she marvels at the girl she used to be. Her stories are old and faded, and when she falters walking through them, his voice loops around her, bringing her back into their moment.

She barely keeps up, getting distracted by his mannerisms, his long limbs gesticulating in emphasis, his body circling around and above her, closer.

Every movement orbits nearer until his legs are open, and she's laughing, and her body enters his sphere of influence.

They have gone through a lot of whiskey.

"Bella." He tugs on her shirt. "I like that name. Bella." He takes another sip, staring at her, and saying her name like it's the first time he's tasting it.

He's asking the one thing she fails to remember.

"I come with baggage," she blurts out in haste and sorrow, cradling her head in her hand, watching for his reaction.

His eyes move to her left hand. It dawns on her that she's forgotten and her stomach is a cage of hummingbirds.

"Then lose it," he says quietly. She almost doesn't hear, but when she does, the cage opens.

He smiles at her parted lips - a little pocket for his lustful gaze.

She slips off the gold band, tucking it into her back pocket.

He'll never see it again.

* * *

A/N:

Cesca Marie and WriteOnTime talked me off the ledge this week as well as schooled me on punctuation but if I listened I wouldn't need them would I


	6. Daydream

**Daydream**

**XxX**

"Oh, baby, that's right!" He laughs out, his broad shoulders shaking in a mirthful fit. They are playing pretend and passing time. The day bends into the afternoon.

It is "guess this, and guess that" with her.

"Oh, c'mon. You know who this is. No? Ok, let me do a dance for you. Hold on, I have to re-tie this stupid tie. Okay, now how does this look? No, don't laugh. Just sit. Just watch."

He does. It is his heart and not his eyes that see.

Wearing one of his white dress shirts, originally sentenced to the back of his closet, she rolls up the sleeves and loosens the tie around her neck. His tall, white socks sag around her calves.

Bella gives him the clumsiest strip tease, bumping into the coffee table during a shimmy, humming a teasing tune that sounds sexy in her head. She swings his tie provocatively.

Dwarfed in his shirt, he pretends she is his.

It is how they play.

Her white body is ethereal beneath the cotton as it sways to and fro. He knows it is adorned by nothing more than his fingerprints and an icy blue thong.

Taking another swig from the bottle, he sits reclined and legs akimbo, on the couch. He hums against her ditty, appreciating the otherwise-silent loft.

For her, he plays the part coated in indifference, but she is too funny and they are too drunk while it is still too bright out, for him to take his role seriously.

When she is close enough to touch, he pulls her onto his lap.

"Gotcha," he murmurs.

She squirms lightly before she gives in to his hands. She reaches down to fondle and reciprocate, but he scoots further into the couch, away from her touch.

Her body, strewn across his lap, is both plush and firm.

Holding her tightly around the back of her shoulders, his other hand pushes one leg to the floor and opens her fully. Her breathing hitches shallow when he tugs on her thong.

As the first finger slides in, she gets on with the noises that wake him up at night. At the second finger, she stutters out his name. He pumps deeply, letting her body know he is present. When her arms can no longer hold, he bends down and runs a rough tongue along the soft shell of her ear.

"Bella," he whispers. He chants her name with each pass at her delicate wall, holding on to her like driftwood without a shore.

Her eyes open to him.

"Yes." She gasps, swallowing air, while her sex curls and tightens around him in a satisfied grip.

When she comes, his eyes alight on her tits, quivering beneath his thin shirt.

**XxX**

They fall asleep on the couch. The milky clouds return and block the sun. It is gray out.

More snow falls.

One of them turned on the television and left it on.

Squinting at the screen, Bella watches the local news broadcast the storm in streams, radars, Doppler images - a swirl of colors and numbers.

The mayor gets his say in a news conference, urging people to stay indoors, check on your neighbors, seal the windows - beware the freeze.

Businesses and schools are shuttered. Flights are canceled. People are stranded.

It is unending and it bores her.

She muses about what it must be like outside, right now. She hates the cold. It latches on to your muscles until your entire body feels brittle.

Air, air, it's all out there, she half-giggles, half-glares at the empty bottle of Jameson.

A vice threatens to clamp around her head. This will hurt tomorrow.

Edward is asleep behind her. He dozes on his side - the available arm, not around her, but over his head as if pondering in slumber.

He's so quiet. She wishes she knew what he was thinking.

Does he think about her when he is not with her?

How she wishes she hadn't broken down in front of him earlier. What had started out as a drunken night fooling around with a new life, had turned into a house of cards.

She wishes she could blame someone for it. She wishes she could blame Rosalie for taking her out that night and ordering too many drinks and challenging her to take the next step.

She wishes her timing were better, too.

"It's not your fault," Rose has said, as a friend should and should not say. But, surely, it is Bella's fault just as much as it is his. Oh no, she isn't going to conjure _him_ right now.

She is here with Edward. A man, not a boy. She is not used to this, but wants it badly. Is it too soon? Will people talk if they knew her heart had moved on already?

She should tell Edward everything.

Now.

She should wake him up and shake him up and open his eyes and make him talk and tell him everything.

Tell him, "sit up, I've got something to say."

Take his hand in hers and say, before she breaks: _I've left him. I only want to be with you. I left him three months ago. I left him the night I met you, and when I sat down next to you, my heart sprouted new limbs for the first time in my life. When I sat next to you, I wasn't pretending to be a bad woman. He was my best friend, maybe I am a bad woman. I don't know. _

_It's not so bad. I made a decision the night I met you. Rose brought me out to celebrate. You are my gift. I blinked, and there you were. _

_The fact is that I'm not a horrible person. I'm not. I was not with him, like with him for years, can you believe that? I was young, he was young, whatever, you know the deal you can read about it in every story about kids from small towns or hear it in a song but it's the same old cliché and, yeah, I had that. That was me. _

_But for the last three months, what I'm trying to say is that, for the last three months I've been wrapping up divorce proceedings. It's over. _

_It's okay, right? You want this? You want us? I don't know, I don't know. What if you say no?_

She should tell him. It's going to be okay. Isn't it? He would want her, and he'd smile this smile that she has to believe is only for her, and he'd hold her and make love to her and she would no longer feel like an in-between girl.

She should wake him up and tell him.

**XxX**

When it is dark in the loft and the television illuminates the room, Edward awakes.

Her mouth surrounds him.

He feels himself grow within her tight lips. Her long hair drapes across his thighs and waist. He keeps his repose, grunting encouragement through his drunken drowsiness.

Opening his eyes slightly, he sees her bent over his body, bobbing her head leisurely. His long lashes are a screen through which his vision feathers and flickers.

The glow from the muted television settles around her head. He focuses on his breathing and the sounds of sucking, lapping. The cool air on his skin contrasts with her hot mouth, all slick and dangerous.

"Bella," he says to her now, here, with his hands on her head. "Come up for air, baby." With one more lick, she brings her head up and meets his eyes.

It is how they speak.

"Bella," he sighs, indicating she should sit next to him. She does. He puts himself away and takes a few breaths. She's beautiful in this haze of lust and alcohol and silence.

She is beautiful when he's sober, too, and lonely and far away from her. She is beautiful always with that lustrous dark hair in varying states of tempest.

She is next to him now, taking him in, her riotous waves and fresh face devoid of masks.

"What is it?" she asks self-consciously.

"You came back," he says to himself, trying to become lucid. He takes her hand and puts it against his chest, a rare intimacy creeping in.

"Earlier this morning, I was prepared to...but you came back," he says with a dark chuckle.

As if needing to shake it off, he gets up and kneels in front of her. "Baby," he whispers with his head in her lap, shaking it back and forth. Her hands ghost through his hair.

"Come," he says through a ragged breath, pulling her up. "Dance with me."

He goes to the radio and turns the dial through dozens of channels while crunchy static squeaks through.

He finds a station on AM frequency. She turns off the television.

Darkness blankets them.

A Jazz ballad plays. The trumpet is a bird announcing itself as it glides across the room.

Dancing, they sway at the top of a snow-capped mountain at night. It is a fevered fantasy of his when he is away from her.

He has thought of her in his loneliness. He has thought of her while crossing a stream and wishing her for balance. He has thought of her while hiking across meadows and through falls.

He has thought of her through the raw blisters and snapping nerves of his tired muscles.

With a mind filled of her, he has climbed up treacherous switchbacks, razoring up mountains, burning for the summit.

He craves her when he is away, like a deer drinking at a trickle of broken ice.

He does not know or care who he is anymore.

She is in his arms and she is crooning along to the ballad, "...it was written in the stars, what was written in the stars shall be…here as in a daydream by my side you stand, here with my tomorrows in your hands…"

She knows this song like she knows his heart is her compass.

He holds her tighter.

She sings them to sleep.

It is the best she can do.

* * *

The song they dance to is Ella Fitzgerald's _**It Was Written In the Stars**_.

You know who my betas are, now go read their work.


	7. Ring

**Ring**

**XxX**

(Edward: 6 months ago)

It is the second shot of Jägermeister he has rejected, with a shy smile, from the two ladies at the end of the bar.

He is not in a mood for their company.

"They're all about you, man." Mike pushes the thick, spicy liqueur back to him.

He's waiting for his brother, not the hug of a hangover. "Send it back with my thanks, but put it on my tab."

Rubbing the back of his warm neck, Edward sends the girls a grateful, but dismissive smile and nod. He does not see them roll their eyes.

He's flattered but unwilling to submit to conceit the way everyone thinks he should. It's ridiculous to him.

He looks again at the wall mirror mounted behind the racks of liquor bottles. Her face, her eyes are looking his way between the bourbon and rum.

She must not know about the mirror and how perfectly placed she is in his line of vision or, he is certain, she wouldn't be so obvious.

He's been staring, too. He smirks into his beer, catching her glances between the bridge of a double-neck-guitar rock ballad.

"Woah oh, we're living on a prayer, take my hand we'll make it, I swear…" sings an affected effeminate voice into his ear, like a musical wet willy.

"Oooh, nice, baby," laughs Edward, pulling back from his brother's antics with a matching grin.

"You like that? I sound better than she does. She's killing that song." Emmett pulls out a stool and uses his size to flag down Mike for a beer. The karaoke singer's version of _Livin' On a Prayer_ is raucous with pitch-less wailing.

Edward takes in the scene behind him. "But at least she has the crowd singing along," he shoots back.

"Since when do you come to karaoke anyway?"

"Since my bar decided to betray me. How are you?"

Emmett looks good, rested, a man casually enjoying his bachelorhood. "Living the good life, bro, living the good life. Mom made cookies for tomorrow, says she wants us there bright and early."

They tap beer necks in hello. "No problem."

Emmett reaches past his brother for the bowl of peanuts left on the bar and munches away. "Alright, so tell me, what's this news?"

Taking some of his brother's peanuts, Edward grins proudly. "Their sending me on assignment. To Colorado."

This could mean anything. Edward is always being sent away. "Okay?"

"I've been asked to follow a millionaire around. We're hiking fifteen 14ers in the next three months."

"Too much math. Talk English."

With a pre-story swig, Edward gives him the important parts: The millionaire lobbied for a vanity piece documenting the last fifteen summits he needs to complete his goal. Over the last few years, he's made it to the top of thirty-nine mountains. Each mountain summit peaks at 14,000-feet-plus above sea level into the airless void. He's been asked to document the ascents for an article and hike with a crew.

It's expected to be physically arduous.

"It's only dangerous if you're not prepared," says Edward preempting his brother's need for reassurance.

It's not as though Edward isn't fit. He's a marathoner, a strong swimmer, and has spent more time in the outdoors, and by extension, his own head, longer than most people. But, Emmett knows that climbing above tree-line can cause altitude sickness – a convergence of perfect-storm body malfunctions – nausea, shortness of breath, dizziness, confusion.

One wrong step. Does his brother realize this? "Are you?"

There she is again, her chest forward like it's singing into a microphone, attacking another cheesy 80's ballad. Edward bites back his grin. His brother distracts him, but keeping up the thread of conversation is second nature.

"I'm ready," he says into the mirror, deflecting.

"So you're, what, hiking up with llamas and shit?"

"And mountain goats for stew. Maybe we'll get lucky and have bunny and venison for dinner every night."

They play catch with sarcasm. It's what they do, but it creeps in that Emmett's not into it.

Understanding his brother's concern, Edward softens his stance. "We'll have a crew and the sponsors provide the gear. We'll have the best support, Em. I'll have to review a few overly-priced tents and hiking shoes, do write ups, but it's going to be stunning. Colorado in the Fall."

"The leaves will be cool. Send mom a picture. She'll love that shit."

"I know, already talked to her."

Emmett nods. After imagining Edward trekking up through the woods, he remembers a story that sends shivers down his spine. "Wait. You're not going to be like that _Into the Wild_ guy, are you?"

"Krakauer?" Edward is surprised, but pleased that his brother remembers the author of his favorite book.

"No, man. The Candles guy. You're not going to renounce your family, fucking burn your dollars and live off the land, are you?"

"You mean McCandless?" Chris McCandless was a boy found dead in the wilderness. Emmett's jest, inadvertently, injects doubt into Edward's bloodstream. He shivers as if a snake crawled up his back.

"Of course, you can always hook up with some hippy chick from a trailer park and sing each other love tunes."

"Wait. I gave you that book. I don't remember that."

"It wasn't. I loaned the book to mom, but it's in the movie."

"There's a hippie chick in the movie?"

"Yeah."

"Did you even read the book?"

"Yeah." Emmett takes a good pull from his beer when inspiration strikes. "You should tell mom that you're becoming a hermit and living off of nuts and berries." He laughs, taking the moment and turning it mischievous.

Edward's eyes glint. "Oh, man. She'd kill me."

"I know."

He pictures his mother's bulging eyes while screaming for his father to 'Come. Here. Right. Now.'

"It'd be funny. Her reaction."

"No, shit. I know."

"Evil."

"Ditto," says Em, trying not to choke on his beer.

Edward glances at the bourbon and the brown eyes again. She cups a hand around her friend's ear and talks with her other hand.

"Is she hot?" asks Edward, leaning into his brother, but keeping his eye on her.

"All brown hair and long skinny legs, your type," says Emmett.

"I'll have to rent that."

Emmett nods and remembers to ask, "Christmas?"

"I'll be here. I'm not leaving for a few weeks. They'll base me out of Seattle."

"Mom…"

"She knows. You think I'd tell you first?"

Emmett nods his approval, he's used to covering all his bases.

"Still with your editor?" He's also used to covering all of Edward's bases.

Edward grimaces, recalling slate-colored eyes, snapping in disapproval through frame-less designer glasses. "Tanya?"

Emmett, never a fan of the T-word, doesn't hold back. "Yeah, you and danger."

"It was short-lived." And not worth it. "But it's off. She wanted more."

Emmett knew this would happen. Unlike him, his brother was aloof to everyone but his own family. Women, no matter how tenacious, were never satisfied with his brother's insularity.

They drink beer and watch ESPN on the flat screen, another steroids-in-baseball story breaks the news.

Emmett, tired of being trumped all night by the girl near the stage, elbows his brother. He leans in to see his brother's view and thinks the blonde is smoking hot. The brunette is a looker, but a size too small for his liking.

"You going to stare at her all night or man up?"

Edward's irritated at being caught ogling like a school boy, but it's directed at himself. He shrugs and takes a good swig of his beer.

Mike saunters up with two shots. "Here you go".

"Nah, Mike, I told you, I'm not…" Edward starts.

Putting a hand up in halt, Mike tells him it's not for him. "They're for me and your brother here."

Emmett follows Mike's gaze to the end of the bar, and the same ladies that Edward rejected, wave painted fingernails at them.

"Well, don't mind if I do," says Emmett, raising his glass in salute to the girls, mouthing a "thank you", and swallowing the liqueur with a hidden shudder.

Mike tells them that the girls want to take them to a strip club. His doughy, All-American face puffs into an expectant grin. "I could meet you guys after my shift."

"First of all, I don't want glitter on my skin. It's disgusting. Second of all, who takes strange guys to a strip club anyway?" Emmett focuses his beer goggles and cranes his neck to peer closely at the two girls.

They are pretty in a department-store-model kind of way, straight out of his mother's glossy catalogues, generic and forgettable. Both are three-sheets-to-the-wind wobbly.

"I don't know," laughs Mike, mistaking his part in the fraternal camaraderie, "I heard your mother likes the pole between her legs." His mouth says this before his brain can catch up.

One look at the Cullen brothers, and the hallways in Mike's head fill loudly with the chirping of wild crickets. They frown at him with twin displeasure and icy glares that make him stumble over an acute apology.

Their silent stares follow him to the end of the bar where Mike busies himself, wiping the same spot furiously.

Edward is the first to break. "He's so easy."

"Yeah, and an idiot."

"At least he has that going for him."

Emmett finishes his beer. It's gotten warm, and he has to get up early in the morning.

"Alright, I'm heading out. See you tomorrow."

His brother, distracted, nods his head. "Wouldn't miss it."

A stool scrapes against concrete, and he watches her rise and tug at her t-shirt where it's ridden up on her back.

Emmett bends down to his Edward's ear. "Careful. Objects in the mirror are closer than they seem, little brother."

Edward's brain instinctively ignores this, his heart does not.

It races.

He plays it off with a shrug and a grin, but Emmett looks at him like he's grown two heads.

"What?"

"Nothing, nothing." He says in farewell, patting Edward on the back.

Once again, Emmett manages to leave his brother with the bar tab.

**XxX**

When she steps up to the bar, he slyly glimpses at her profile. She tries to play it cool, her body moving to the music and pretending he is not there.

Her hair, loose and wilted from body heat, is caught at the nape by her slim fingers. It is long and settles over her right breast, the tips brush along the peak of her nipples.

Her ass in those jeans; his body responds on his behalf, uncrossing his legs, hooking his heels on the bottom rail and sitting in welcome-stance. He imagines his hands traversing the slopes of her body.

He notices the ring and his heart, used to lack of oxygen under extreme duress, keeps tempo with the size of this new thrill.

The whiskey she asks for is suddenly necessary.

She is gorgeous and he's been watching her all night, casting glances, and when she's finally near, he's too stubborn to let it go.

When she takes the seat nervously, and bids her friend good-bye, he imagines she must be looking for a bit of fun.

He smiles good-naturedly with a level glance, gauging. "Long day?"

"You can say that." She breathes it out like she's wanted someone to ask her that all day.

_She belongs to someone else. _

But he is too hopped up on the leftover adrenaline from the news of his assignment to let details bother him, and besides, he's getting drunk on her voice.

When he asks her why she needs the drink, he's prepared to hear about the husband. But she surprises him and tells him she's a teacher. She walks him through a tiring day, shuffling kids in and out of a Biology classroom, setting up and breaking down labs, sneaking glances at the clock more often than they do.

He laughs because, as he tells her, she'd be the teacher he'd pick on just to see her fluster.

He was a bad kid, he admits, because he was bored.

She blushes at his admission and tells him she'd send him to detention.

"Did you always want to be a Biology teacher?" he asks. He wants to imagine her with her hair pinned up, neck exposed, and high-heeled.

"Oh, no. I wanted to be a Geologist. I loved Earth Sciences when I was a kid. I was your classic tomboy."

Her own earthly stories are buried so deep, he shovels with question after question until he hits pay-dirt and she haltingly relays childhood memories of digging up worms, fishing with her dad, hiking unpaved trails, and morning swims in creeks.

She is obviously a girl of Summer, he muses, with the fondness of fingers that itch to tuck her hair behind her ear.

She speaks about herself like she's a discarded photograph and he knows, then, that whomever she belongs to has a tenuous hold.

She is telling him about a kayaking adventure through the black canyons of Colorado with her friend, Rose.

"I'm going there on assignment," he interrupts excitedly, launching into details and signaling Mike for another round.

It's smooth; this night with a woman who cannot belong to him or tie him down. He's willing to breathe air into her, if it means she'll gasp his name into the fleeting night.

Look at her, she talks with her hands. The ring is on her hand. It leaves trails under the bar lights like a symphony conductor's baton to music he's never heard of.

"I like your voice, Bella." He drinks deep and hovers close when she chuckles in self-deprecation.

She trails a finger on the rim of her glass in a lazy circle. "How would you know?"

Feeling bold, he smirks, placing elbows on the bar, and looking pointedly in the mirror. "I've seen you sing."

His voice, distilled to a sweet husky, warms her.

Following his lead, she sees a man and a woman regarding each other with curious smiles and it dawns on her that she has been sitting for him all night. Her eyes widen and her mouth shapes into an "O".

Busted.

"You've been watching?" She knows he has, he's told her. But she's one for written answers, and rehashing, and multiple methods of confirmation before she can believe what she sees.

He supplies her with a grin and a wink in answer.

She doesn't break eye contact when she smacks him on the arm playfully and calls him a dick.

"You could have told me," she says incredulously, her shyness slowly returning.

He laughs because no one has ever called him that.

Through the glass, she frowns worriedly and her teeth meet her lip, the blood pooling at the corners of her mouth.

Her reaction sobers him, and it is enough to carry him over the threshold.

He doesn't want to let her go. "I'm sorry. I supposed I should have, but then it would have sent you running, right?"

And she apologizes again and again, and tells him she did not know she was so obvious and she never approaches men and it is then that he realizes she has forgotten it.

He can hear the music of the ring when she speaks. Her hand stirs the air, thickening it.

The ring tells him everything he wants to hear, and nothing at all.

She is a lonely wife, of that there is no doubt. She is sad in her speech.

He wants to take her home. He wants to bury his body, entire, within the sweaty ringlets of her hair and the quaking pale flesh of her.

The lights are up and the bar is clearing. Last call has come and gone.

There is nothing left to say. They've reached the extent of talking.

Later that night, it will be the sound of the ring that clatters and clangs each time he is inside her, and long after she has taken it off.

Long after.

* * *

A/N:

My betas, Cesca Marie and WriteOnTime, quote philosophers and interpret particle physics for fun; respectively. I just ride on their shoulders.


	8. Drifts

**Drifts**

**XxX**

"_In the Fall of 2009, I was assigned to chronicle the unmerciful and obsessive mission of Marcus Fiorelli, whose personal net worth did nothing to fend off the authorities from allowing him to complete a quixotic climb up fifteen summits that cluster the mountain ranges of Central Colorado. His efforts were frustrated on many fronts – a weakened crew, inclement weather, delays in schedule and unsympathetic authorities blocking access to trailheads. _

_Within a month's time, we would learn the mistakes of taxing the body while ascending above tree line, where little oxygen exists for animal or vegetation, testing our physical and psychological mettle. I have researched and interviewed the crew of nine from the failed expedition and, if my facts are found faulty by my editor's tireless fact checkers, it is because no one person's story could be corroborated, including my own. Altitude sickness claimed most of us, and though it bears with it a multitude of physical symptoms, the most acute and devastating manifestation is in the mind's corners. Excessive exposure to the airless void warped our basic ability to capture and process details for lengths of time, altering memories and rendering us useless._

_I spent months, off and on with the crew, ascending treacherous terrain leading us to unforgivable summits and twisting our grip on sanity with each lunging footfall. This is that story." - Excerpt from "No Mountains Moving" by Edward Cullen, National Trekker Magazine._

**XxX**

Check in through security. Take off your shoes. On-time at the gate. Coffee with creamer, please. No pillow, thank you. De-plane. Check for messages. You have one.

Check in through security. Take off your shoes. Take out your laptop. Just in time to board. Coffee with creamer, please. De-plane. Check for messages. You smile.

Check in through security. Take off your shoes. Take out your laptop. Everyone is boarding. Another coffee packet in your carry-on. De-plane. Check for messages. Your chest tightens. You smile.

Check in through security. Take off your shoes, sir. Your shoes. You're the last to board. One coffee, no creamer. Whiskey, please. De-plane. Check for messages on your way to her.

Check in through security. It's a holiday. The line is long. Take off your shoes. Take out your laptop. Sir, don't forget your laptop. The gate is closing. No, just a beer. De-plane. Check for messages. It's mom. It's dad. It's not her.

Check in through security. Forgot your boarding pass. Forgot your laptop. Christmas lines. Take off your shoes. Miss the flight. The gate is closed.

Check in through security. Take off your shoes. Take out your laptop. Uncharged phone. Call on pay phone. Get here before the storm. I want to see you. The gate is closing.

**XxX**

His dreams are a patchwork of his life, with and without her:

In one panel, the bookstore is busy and bright. She's standing in front of a shattered window, facing him, hair flying forward from a jet stream thundering through the store, overturning shelves of books, pages tearing out and whipping past her smiling face, pulling it into the ether.

He reaches for her, but tugs on an unwoven stitch into a bank of snow where he lies naked, laughing up at her laughing face; with her chin tucked in and her eyes rolled in, she straddles him. She fingers his fingers, playing, pinioning her body to his, heating the only place that needs to be warm.

The sun frames her lashes and he reaches up to touch, but they return coated in rust, and it tastes like wet copper.

Her movements are fast and hard, dusting up a cold cyclone until she is all lightness and glinting snow. Terrible sparkles cover his lids and shake him deaf and dumb, packed into the snowy bank.

Immobile.

In another frayed frame, his toes are swollen inside the box of his hiking boots.

_How many climbs have we done? _

They have hours yet to go before turning back. Their photographer, Peter, lags behind on the dip of a saddle linking two summits together.

The trail ends and the stone markers are gone.

Hail pelts at his face and the oxygen tanks are empty. He turns around and Peter slips on a lip of ice. The scenic mountain range disappears with the ground under his feet. Instinct tells him to grip and hold on, hold on, to whatever he can clutch.

They need to climb - quick, up a frozen waterfall, slick and slippery with bronzed moss and calcium. His arms burn. His heart beats at his temples, pushing for release, for a gulp of anything, anything to free him.

He fears he is dying.

He fears his mother will worry.

**XxX**

They fall asleep in the still of the storm and night skids in on black ice.

Outside his window, a tree gives in to the ruthless weight of accumulated snow. It strains and groans until the thick branch falls in a harsh thud.

It is loud enough to rattle his dreams and wake him.

In a fog, his ass slides against hers as he fidgets and shudders. She has stolen the covers.

He becomes hard and feral, like a stranger.

He turns over and his arms cage her pliant body. He cradles his nose in her neck, desperate for her cinnamon scent.

She's had a lot to drink, probably fending off an inebriated dream.

With a hand splayed on her small hip, he plunges in.

She is suddenly awake. He is suddenly despaired.

His furrowed brow stakes claim in the valley between her shoulder blades, twisting his fingers in her hair and holding on for dear life.

His sinewy limbs press in, hugging tight, and climbing her stroke for stroke. He breaks into a cold sweat.

She pushes her ass against him, moaning in heavy need and newly-sprouted anger that this is happening.

She is barely wet, but getting wetter, in between her scissored legs.

She grabs on to his arm, her body bending for him, her mind confused. "Edward?"

And her voice, the last of what he can stand, rips across his heart. He grips harder and fucks faster, trying, but choking on the words stranded deep in his belly.

She enjoys this for as long as it takes to process that she's not involved in his frantic lovemaking. She is a bystander, wishing he would slow it down, let her in.

She props up an image of Edward's eyes, smiling down at her. Edward, holding her hand while they browse in a bookstore. Edward, spinning her by the waist with a tender touch.

He comes raggedly, sucking in a lungful of fear.

Her images fall off the ledge and shatter.

Bella disengages herself and turns on her belly, tucking her arms and hands underneath her raw body. She turns her cheek into the cool pillow and blinks into the pitch dark. She can hear him toss and turn next to her razor-like anger. He's done and talks to her with shoulder-kisses, but she still feels lonely and pitiful.

The mattress dips and rises behind her. A breeze in her ear apologizes.

The bathroom door shuts.

_Maybe I am not enough._

She succumbs to this idea in sleep.

**XxX**

Edward is in the bathroom, dry heaving into the toilet to a wretched realization.

_She belongs to someone else, _says the man in the mirror.

_What a fool, fool, fool._

By the time his chest subsides, he decides.

* * *

A/N:

My betas, Cesca Marie and Write On Time, played good cop and bad cop this week. I won't divulge who was what, but suffice it to say that they are on your side. Lucky.


	9. Hangover

**Hangover**

**XxX**

Morning: the City wears a white muzzle.

Twelve inches have accumulated in the span of 24 hours. The forecast calls for another twelve in 24.

Bella wakes up before him and grabs her clothes, strewn about his loft. The TV is on; muted, but on. She tries to recall: didn't she turn it off?

The coffee table sits askew - a mess of glasses, bottle caps, and wrapped glow-in-the-dark condoms tell on her and remind her: they never got around to making those water balloons. Underneath the couch, the black mouth of a wine bottle yawns into the room.

She groans, having forgotten about it.

Outside, the landscape is devoid of City textures, where the silence is in collective breath-holding, waiting out the storm. A Grand Oak slouches in white burden and against his sliding glass doors, the snow is knee deep.

She realizes that she is thinking in whispers.

She tiptoes past his sleeping form to the bathroom where the furnishings are utilitarian – a shell-shaped standing sink, a shower stall, and a toilet.

Her bra hangs on the hook behind the door. She will wear it today and the rest of her own clothes, she decides, while downing two aspirin found in his medicine cabinet.

She splashes water, cold, on her face. It drips off her eyelashes, the closest thing she has to tears. Her heart is sobbing and she can't make it stop.

Struggling to recall yesterday, her memories are full of guilt and self-hate. She remembers his arms around her last night and the desperate, lonely fucking, every bit of it leaving a residual bitter taste in her mouth.

In the beginning, she preferred to be emotionally detached, but she is no longer at the beginning.

And where, in their mad state, is he?

_How can she tell him she's no longer married? Mother fucker, what is she to him? _

She sits on the toilet lid, legs crossed, and body doubled over. She worries her bottom lip and hangs her head, shaking it back and forth, her emotions on a swing, vacillating.

Rocking to and fro, she can't believe for one second that he would want to stay with her.

His actions, at times, may seem loving and tender, but he never has words. Where are the words?

She gets up and paces with fisted hands at her temples. _He's such a jerk, an arrogant prick._

She called him out on it the first night she met him, she recalls, with a sour stomach. She wants to gag.

The loyalties she's lost over the years do not compare to this.

And who is to say that if she confesses, it would make him happy?

What if he felt betrayed that she didn't tell him earlier?

She is only certain of one thing: If he rejects her, it would not be just another heart break.

It would be her first.

**XxX**

Coming out of the bathroom, she has on her red coat and chews on flavor-less anger just to stand upright.

The bed has been stripped of its sheets, exposing a blue foam mattress and box spring, and the pillows have been cast off to a puffy pile on the floor.

She squeezes her eyes at the sight, bunching the fabric lining in her coat pockets until her knuckles are white.

He is in the kitchen with his back to her, wearing nothing but grey long johns, having become immune to the chill in his loft. She appreciates him privately, noting his spine is a knotted rope mounted on the ledges of his back muscles; every move he makes, every gesture, and the machine twists and pulls in a harmony of angles like a modern-day Vitruvian Man.

Her hands have played there. Her fingernails itch.

His dark hair is red-tinted under the flood of fluorescent light, in such disarray from her hands and his. She smiles tenderly at his endearing lack of modesty, almost always stripped for her.

She watches him, quietly, as he grabs a frying pan, plunking it down on the gas burner, and setting the heat to High. He opens the refrigerator and reaches for a carton of eggs, opens it, and bends his head to take a cautious sniff.

She can't fight the giggle that flitters out of her turmoil.

"Oh," he says turning around, startled she is there. Fleetingly, his eyes take in the red coat and the sight instinctively forces out an invitation that he does not mean to give.

"I was making breakfast. Eggs. Want some?" He turns back to the stove, ignoring the red coat and reaching for the oil. He cracks two eggs into the sizzling pan. They immediately curl crispy at the edges.

"I was thinking I should make my way home today." Her emotions speak without her mind's permission, passively throwing the ball in his court.

"Okay," he shrugs, deflecting.

His relief is tied up in panic, feeling his control slip. Having decided to let her go today, he never thought about the how and the repercussion.

Looking over his shoulder, he evenly tells her she can eat before she leaves. The knot tying her coat is loose. He wants to give it a little pull, wanting to see her undone one final time.

He can't take his eyes away from that knot. It mocks the one in his heart. She is talking to him, but he's not listening.

"What?" He takes a step in her direction.

Bella points at the stove in alarm. "The eggs! They're burning."

"Shit!" Edward scoots the handle, taking the pan is off the burner before the smoke detector goes off.

"You had the fire on too high," she admonishes in a small voice.

He runs a hand through his hair and down his face. "Yeah, I get that," he concedes through clenched teeth. "Why don't you make some toast and I'll start again."

Resignedly, he throws the pan in the sink, re-lights the burner with a lighter, and listens for the gas to catch flame.

**XxX**

Her coat is thrown over the back of her chair. They eat perfectly cooked fried eggs and toast. He turned up the TV earlier and there's nothing on but news about the historic blizzard, holding the City hostage.

He's ready to tear his hair out.

They eat silently, but inside, their minds chorus and chant.

Silverware scrapes.

He douses his eggs in ketchup and sops up the yolk with thick, buttered toast.

She adds salt and eats the egg whites, put off by the runny yellow congealing on the tines of her fork.

Edward takes a bite of egg-covered toast and narrows his eyes at her plate. "You don't like your eggs?"

Swallowing she smiles reassuringly, "No, they're fine, I never eat the yolk. I just eat around it."

He puts his fork down and looks at the door behind her. "Maybe this isn't working."

"Don't worry, the eggs are fine. It's just…"

"No," he interrupts again, attempting to explain, but the words are lodged in his throat by a large chunk of despair.

He swallows and everything hardens. "This isn't working, Bella. It's a bust."

When his inclement tone enters, the vice wraps cold within, and she prays she's getting the wrong message. "Seriously, Edward, it's just eggs. The toast..."

His chair drags on the linoleum and he stands with his plate. "It's not about the fucking eggs, Bella," he says, exasperated.

And she knows.

Anger wants a go at him. _Fucking jerk, how dare he? Who does he think he is?_

Fear wants to get on its knees. _No, no, I want to stay. Say I can stay._

"Then what is it about," she asks, standing up abruptly, her hand on the chair for balance.

He has his back to her, arms wide over the kitchen sink. Now that he's put the first foot forward, he's going to continue until he can climb out, tuning out until he can no longer hear his heart beat.

"Nothing. A distraction. I don't want this anymore."

Every insecurity washes over her. Figures; if she couldn't make it with a boy, how did she ever expect to make it with this man?

"A distraction? That's it?"

"That's it. There's nothing more you can take from me." This much he knows is true. She's a married woman, and by all rights, not his for the taking or the wanting. Last night's amplified fear kept him awake and cold. He sat for hours with the TV on, looking out the window, watching her sleep, pacing a remorseful track around the room, caged.

"God, Edward, I just want…" _to tell you._ But she's a mess inside, caught completely off guard by his sudden hostility. She has so much to say and if she opens her mouth, she's afraid it won't make a dent in his newly-donned armor.

_You want my fucking soul_, he thinks bitterly. She's had her fun, he's had his fun. Now he wants peace and the end to this needle-nosed torment nipping at his heart.

Turning around, he crosses his arms and legs, reclining on the kitchen counter, stonily watching her and daring her to test his resolve.

She's never seen this man before.

His body is a box of tightened muscle and he needs her out of there before his pride rips them in two. With a raised brow of indifference he spits out, "Didn't you say you needed to get home?"

It's enough. She gets it. If she hears anymore rejection, his floor will be covered in regurgitated egg whites and misery.

"Just like this," she mumbles dejectedly, picking up her coat, putting it on, moving the hair behind her collar and opening her mouth to speak parting words.

She's mute with confusion and anger.

"Just like this," he echoes as she grabs her purse and turns away from him.

She needs air.

When the door shuts, so do his eyes.

* * *

A/N:

I think I owe Write On Time and CescaMarie money for the couch time this week.


	10. Night & Day

**Night & Day**

**XxX**

(Emmett: The night before the storm)

"Don't forget to follow through with your index finger. Point this one up and out, like a thumbs up." Emmett has a pretty girl pressed up in front of him who's angling for a bowling tip that gets her face-time with the best bowler in the league, figuring he knows what he's doing with a 250 average and a knock-'em-dead, dimpled grin that the bowling alley has seen fit to frame on their wall of fame.

But, so close, it's not bowling she's thinking about: being from the Bay Area, his scent reminds her of chocolate covered almonds. She closes her eyes for a split second before he moves her body with his and sends the ball directly into the gutter.

She feels his chuckle pull away behind her. "That's alright. Keep practicing, you'll do fine."

"When you're done playing Yoda with the young lady, pardon me miss, come say hi to your team and let's win this," says a Texan drawl, breaking and entering into their practice.

Sending off a pony-tailed, Little Kitty (he doesn't waste imagination on that moniker) with a pat on the shoulders, Emmett fist bumps his best friend, Jasper, before tying on his shoes.

League night is his favorite night. The boys come out from their desk jobs, just like him, and unwind with pitchers of beer, smack talk, and pretty girls that use their bowling stances to flirt – twisting, shimmying and wriggling on light feet, bending at their knees, their waist, or better yet, their hips before releasing the ball down the lane.

Their giggles, and claps, and bouncy-bouncy excitement make a long workday worth the extra meeting, the obnoxious co-workers, the drudgery.

Slipping on his wrist support and flexing his fingers, Cowboy pulls up beside Emmett, gearing up for the pending bowl-off. Tonight, it's their team against the Recharged Cobras, a formidable bunch of tools, sponsored by an energy drink maker.

Cowboy is Jasper's bowling name that didn't take long to catch on, being that he talked as easy and lilting as swaying Spanish Moss. Chicks swooned on it. "I think we have this, tonight. You ready?"

"Yeah," says Emmett, his face in both hands, centering his bowling mojo and coming up with a fist bump. They'll do that all night. But first, it's time for the warm up, taking turns knocking down some pins before the game begins.

Emmett takes his ball and cradles it with care. "Edward's coming in tonight. It's a good thing, too, they say it's gonna snow tomorrow."

Cowboy's lining up three spaces to the left of the floorboard, adjusting his stance for a hook throw, releasing the ball at his ankle, and coming up with his right arm in bull-fighter flair. Ole! And he gets a strike. Not only is it effective, but the girls love it.

Emmett rolls his eyes, taking his head along for the exasperated ride. "Show off."

Cowboy winks and blows Emmett a kiss that goes pointedly ignored.

Emmett gets up to roll, dusting off his hands on the soft pouch of a powdery rosin bag.

Picking up a towel, Jasper, the friend, picks up the conversation, asking what's been on his mind lately.

"So where's he been these last few months, anyway? Every time I call him, he's either traveling or busy."

"He's been all over. Remember that assignment in Colorado back in September? Climbing those 14ers?"

"Yeah. Sounded brutal."

"It was, and stupid. Apparently, it failed a month in. So he's been shuttling back and forth between here and Seattle, wrapping up his story since Trekker's offices are there."

This doesn't make sense to Jasper. It's February and Edward is still MIA after all these months? It must have been a crazy trek. "I called him for a few pick-up games but I never heard back."

Emmett tenses and his mood takes a sour turn that his friend is quick to catch.

"Yeah. It's Bella, his…shit. Not his…whatever, the girl he's been seeing. I told you about her, right?"

Not one to retain gossip, Jasper vaguely recalls Emmett mentioning a new girl in Edward's life. From the sound of it, it's serious, until he remembers that she's married.

Emmett doesn't wait for an answer. "He says he's going to cut her out."

"Who, the married chick?"

Putting his ball down gingerly on the carousel, Emmett palms Jasper's shoulder, looking around conspiratorially. He chides in a terse whisper, "Dude, don't say it."

"Say what? 'married girl'?"

"Shh," he admonishes with more force than he can convey, "don't say that shit out loud, man!"

Jasper steps out of Emmett's hold with a wicked gleam in his eye, a realization dawning on him.

"Right, 'cause these jokers really care that your brother's getting it on with a married woman," he goads in that annoying drawl of his. Before Emmett can interrupt, like he's preparing to do, with his shoulders tightening up and his body squaring, Jasper keeps the feel. "Look, man. It's no big deal. So what if he's got her riding his pony, it just means less fuss."

"If it were less fuss, then it wouldn't be a problem."

"Enlighten me."

"He's not himself anymore."

"What? Brooding and shit? Sounds to me like she's not so bad…"

"He's missed holidays." They move over to the bar during the break and order a pitcher of beer. "Mom was pissed when he didn't make it home for Christmas, said he missed his flight. This last assignment was brutal. I get that. But to miss Christmas and forget to call…"

"Maybe it was the climb. Your brother's pretty bad ass. He's asked me to go on runs with him, but fuck, your brother's intense, man." Jasper's remembering the five-miler he signed up for, only to have Edward take them off the trail, and make a circuit through the neighborhood, behind backyards with yellow leaves, through alleyways, under bridges not meant for pedestrians, always diverging toward the unpaved road. When done, Jasper was a soaking, unhappy mess.

He would have rather completed the loop at his local park where the girls run in tennis skirts.

"Or it's the girl. It's not right. What girl would just hook up with a guy while she's married?"

Not commenting on Emmett's logic, Jasper keeps it to himself. It won't do to argue when Emmett's on Team Edward, steadfastly. The game's about to start and he wants to quit this conversation, but Emmett won't bring his best game if his mind is on loop. "So, you're telling me she gets under his skin."

"Like, in his fucking bones, man. Freaky shit."

"Maybe it's alright then. He should go for it."

Swallowing the last of his beer and narrowing his eyes in disdain, Emmett's look is all about disagreeing. His silence only urges Jasper on; it's his opening. "No offense, but your brother's not shy about going after what he wants. Hell, he's got his own set of balls on the nature trail, but when it comes to women, he's a fucking cub scout. That doesn't add up."

"She's married, Jasper. Not a Boy Scout patch."

"I just mean, why not tell her what he wants, why not go after it, her, you know what I mean."

"What part of married, don't you get? It would be crazy of him. Hell, he is crazy, fucking loopy these days." Emmett signals over the bartender. He needs tequila for this shit.

"If it's not crazy, it's not love."

Emmett groans into his hands. Here comes Jasper-the-sidewalk-philosopher again. "I've seen stranger things happen. People meet over the Internet and get married now. The rules are different, sex is different. I can't get laid without a girl asking for my birth certificate and medical records. Used to be you could meet up for an evening and enjoy some adult company, nice-like. Win-win."

Emmett gives him a curt nod of solidarity but it comes up empty. He's never had a one-night stand. He likes to see a girl smile and know that he put it there; even if the moment is temporary, there's a real satisfaction in it, like waking up to your favorite song and your day just brightened up effortlessly. Simple.

Jesus, why does his brother always go at it the hard way?

In the end, Edward is still fucked up over witchy-pussy. Valentine's Day is around the corner and they're taking Mom out since Dad's at a conference. The last thing he needs is for his tender-hearted little brother to break down in his ravioli.

Emmett laughs wryly at the image. Nah, Edward's not that fucking whipped.

"Fuck it. I'm calling him in the morning," he says, closing the topic, the shot of tequila warming him. He's ready now. "Let's bowl."

**XxX**

(Rose: The morning before the storm)

"Let me get this straight." Alice's high voice streaks through the salon in her version of a whisper – agitated and pitchy. "She had sex with him before she got divorced?"

Alice's body language moves in righteous judgment; her shoulders lean in toward Rose, to the annoyance of the Korean beautician buffing Alice's toes.

They are indulging in pedicures in the middle of Winter. They made their appointment weeks ago and in spite of the chatter about a blizzard tomorrow, they decided to stick with the plan. Plus, it is Alice's treat. She is hungry for scoop.

Steeling herself, Rose defends her friend. "Jake had, basically, called it off. He ignored her when she wanted to go back to counseling. That was the end of the line for her. We went out to karaoke, because, let's face it, she and Jake were done longer than that. And that's where she met Edward. I don't think she meant for it to get far."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. I mean, who does that? Sorry, Rose, don't look at me like that, I know you're her friend. But let's put it out there. She could have waited, right? Did she need to shack up with some guy so soon?"

"It's, B, Alice. Let it go. You've been griping about this since I told you." Rose was hissing now and wishing she stayed home. It wasn't worth the trouble, sitting in this chair, under a harsh light, held down by her foot, and entertaining Alice with Bella's problems. 'What a shit feeling' she thinks, looking out the window, wishing she had her own love-drama to gossip about instead.

The pedicurist wraps their legs in paraffin, setting their feet gingerly in a hot bath of bubbly water. It relaxes.

"Do you know how she met Jake?" asks Rose, calmer.

"High school sweethearts, right?"

"Yeah, something like that. They knew each other even before that, I think. She told me they bonded over cliff-diving." There were other reasons they stuck close in the beginning, but that's not for her to share with the likes of Alice.

"Cliff diving? I didn't know Bella even swam!" Alice snorts this out, as if the thought of Bella in anything other than her teacher clothes were ridiculous.

"She did, and much more than that. B was a reckless bitch," Rose recalls fondly, navigating through the various artifacts of their friendship. The bracelet they made out of river shells, the sloppy braids they gave each other by a campfire, the out-of-tune singing of a Cyndi Lauper song while canoeing.

"I'm not saying she's not cool. It's just wrong. She committed, and if a marriage like Jake and Bella's can't withstand, what's that tell the rest of us? I thought they were the real deal."

"She made a big mistake."

"Yeah, she did," Alice says, glad that Rose is finally getting it.

"Not in the way you think. She made the mistake of confusing absolute friendship with absolute love. They're not one and the same."

"A couple can be lovers and friends," says Alice, interpreting it her way. "Now. Ugh, I can't even imagine. No one hangs out anymore. I never see Jake or Leah. Bella's off in la-la land with this new guy, and it's like the whole group's just broken. I miss us."

'Your us and our us, isn't the same' thinks Rose. "Tough. It's her life and she got out. It wasn't good for her."

"Selfish."

"You're my friend, but cut the girl some slack. You saw how she was with Jake. She was lifeless. That the kind of friend you wanted? She wasn't selfish then; if anything, she was too fucking selfless. She never said 'No.'"

"I told you, it's how she said 'no' or whatever you're getting at. Jake's a mess since she left…"

"He agreed to the divorce. Who the hell is he to start reacting to her now? Too little, too late." Rose grits out, seeing her face stressed out in the wall mirror and knowing this will give her a headache later. She lowers her voice even though they are the only clients in the lonely salon.

They're interrupted by their pedicurists. "What color?" they ask, ready to paint toes.

"Well, you know what? Never mind. It's a moot point, right? Now she's with Edward and got her man. She's moved on. I'm sure everyone will just move on, do their thing," says Alice, selecting her favorite nail color from the offered tray.

Rose picks a neutral color and ignores Alice's backhanded whining. "It's not that easy," she ventures evenly.

"What do you mean?"

"Bella hasn't told Edward that she's divorced yet."

"She's been divorced for three months and he doesn't know? He still thinks he's with a married woman? Oh, that's rich. That's fucking brilliant. What else is she holding back, that she's carrying his illegitimate child, too?"

"Stop! Enough. It may be black and white to you, miss-I've-never-fucked-up-in-a-relationship. But we wish it were that easy. Let's not even bring up that guy who screwed you and 'dropped his cell phone in the toilet, sorry I didn't call you for months' while you waited night and day. Let it go. B takes her time, end of story. She may need a little push to get moving, but she does, eventually."

After a while. At some point. Soon. Rose hopes so. Bella's been different lately, in a good way. So, maybe.

'When do we stop being our own worst enemies', she muses wryly, returning her eyes to the window, wishing she were stocking up for tomorrow's storm, renting movies and snuggling up to some guy who finds her hot in sweatpants. If it were easy, she'd be in a relationship, too. How hard is it to land a decent guy when she's got the looks, career, and all her teeth?

Next to the window, to the side of the salon's small foyer, is a coat rack. Rose notices and appreciates a knitted lavender scarf with silver thread woven through it.

Alice has finally shut up in a posture that's bursting to say more behind those pursed lips.

"Where did you buy that scarf?" Rose asks, pointing to it.

"I didn't. Bella gave it to me," Alice chokes out.

"She did?"

"Um, she made it for me. It was a Christmas gift."

There's a small scratching noise coming from Alice's direction that Rose responds to. Her friend is looking down and picking at the vinyl on her stool. "I noticed it on you earlier," says Rose with a tiny side-smile. "It looks good on you."

"Thanks."

They sit in silent truce for a while. The pedicurists are finishing up, applying the final coat, slipping on uncomfortable foam slippers to dry their toes.

"Do you think they talk about us?" whispers Rose.

"Who? Bella and Edward? I don't even know…"

"Not them," she hisses, bemused by Alice's obstinacy. She'll never change. "Them," she corrects, gesturing furtively at the Korean technicians who have been speaking in their native language all the while.

Alice giggle-whispers. "I don't know. I wonder sometimes, though." Her eyes take in the salon and the ladies are at their stations, wiping down, putting away, chatting. "Maybe not." Alice reassures herself.

"Maybe," Rose echoes unconvincingly, checking out their toes.

Alice wiggles her black-painted toes in her flip-flops. She is happy.

* * *

A/N:

Shout outs to my two 'night & day' betas who help me keep the crazy to a minimum. They're awesome.


	11. Skins

**Skins**

**XxX**

But it's not, _"Just like this."_

Bella runs – hair and arms tangled up in her coat – down two steps from his door, through the musky foyer of his building and slaps her hand against the heavy security door, pushing it wide open with her body weight into a funnel of snow and wind, swirling and freezing the tears in her eyes, the drip in her nostrils.

_What the hell am I doing?_

She'd have to bend at the knees to hike a path to the sidewalk that she can barely see for the thick assault of flakes piling on her lashes (and with a little gasp) in her mouth – choking her with white panic.

Her arm shoots out and fingers reach for the door before it locks her out, but it's wet and slips away. She strikes her foot out, lightning, and stops its momentum before she's shut out from his life for good.

_That almost happened_.

She squeezes back into the foyer, bent at the waist and panting, wiping at her face furiously, and coughing up a pathway to air. Her hair, loosened of its early morning ponytail, sags to the side. Her body does the shake and chatter dance, knocking knees and crossed-arm rubbing.

She claps her hands for friction, for heat.

Her blood sings from the adrenaline.

There is a wildness in her eyes, set off by the flimsy threat of suffocation and it is enough.

Enough to make her laugh at herself, to look up at the decaying ceiling through crazy tears and shake her head at this burst of life.

This kind of passion, intensity, and ecstasy of pain does not announce itself every day. She has never felt so alive.

Her anger, no longer hers to own, dissolves into a triumphant longing – a wicked pleasure she's never experienced. This is what it means to let go, to be at the top of the cliff and let her stomach fall before the rest of her body can catch up.

This is what it means to yearn enough to fight for someone.

She never held this ardor for anyone before. Not for her ex, her oldest best friend, that she had to give up in order to grow up. What love they contained for each other was absent of passion, like a glaringly empty jar.

She indulges one silent moment for the death of her marriage: she closes her eyes.

She tries for grief and misses. She tries for nostalgia and barely touches it. She tries for hatred and hears the wind outside.

The foyer is empty, but crowded with her snapping energy. One thing is for certain. She won't be pushed out that door.

_Not like this._

She slumps down onto a chair left out for guests – a hunter green, wing-backed piece with broad armrests, stuffed and stitched for comfort. Its neighbor is an antique end table topped with a floral jar lamp, unlit. A weakened sunray filters its way past the wall of falling snow, through the floor-to-ceiling windows that flank the building's iron door.

Edward's apartment is the only one on the ground floor of a 19th century restored Victorian building, and to the left of it is a set of twisting stairs leading up one more flight.

She stares out the window where the wind is drifting top-snow from piles puffed around a fallen tree branch underneath Edward's window. She can make out the fresh wound on the tree, its stump of a bark stripped and gashing.

_When did that happen?_

"Oh, hello there," calls down a raspy, but pleasant, baritone from the winding juncture at the stairs.

There with a snow shovel in his hand and layered in warm winter darks – a weatherproof pair of Carhartt overalls, tan puffy coat, and a hunter's cap with the ear flaps unbuttoned – is a tall, brownstone of a man with kind, hazel eyes and a large smile under his grayed mustache.

Bella is self-conscious about loitering in the building's foyer of the man who just ended their affair. She finds herself blushing at the image of a half-naked Edward on the other side of his apartment door while she's been banished in front of this stranger.

She shivers, not from the cold. It is awkward.

"Hi," she lets out with a short breath, hoping he won't ask her what she's doing sitting in the drafty foyer.

"Sorry, miss, I didn't mean to startle you. I figured everyone would be holed up during this storm. I'm Arthur. I'm up in 2B." With the handle of his shovel, he points to the top of the stairs where she can't see.

He's standing in the same spot, uncertain whether or not his movement will disturb the young lady's meditation, but the foyer is a public place after all. She's looking at him like she needs to say something, so he nudges her with a softened voice. "And your name, young one?"

She's not wet behind the ears, but the simple endearment adds kindling to the spark in her system.

"I'm Bella," she starts cautiously, and at his earnest head-nod and smile, she repeats again with more life, "Bella Swan."

Feeling out her voice and liking how the lushness moves on her tongue, she continues, "Are you the one who's been shoveling the walk, Arthur?"

She gets up from her seat and he waves her back into it, understanding that he is intruding on her private musings. It does get stifling being cooped up, he knows. "Don't get up on my account. It looks to me like you've got a little cabin fever, yes?"

Her eyes, of their own accord, dart to Edward's door. "Uh, yes, you can say that. I wanted to go for a walk, but it's piled up and hard to see." The lie comes easy now that she's focused.

Arthur catches the flitter of her eyes, their ownership of apartment 1-A, and the subtle meaning behind them, but it's not his place. He's moved to the bottom step and puts his hand out. She shakes it, and his palm is warm and calloused into work-worn leather with white hair patched at the knuckles. She is a comforted child for the briefest of moments.

"And to answer your question," he says, stepping back, "I'll have the walk shoveled in no time. It's good exercise, you see."

She nods, not understanding why anyone would want to go out in _that _for two seconds.

_Where the hell am I going to go?_

"I better get out there or it'll be hard going in another hour. Enjoy your freedom, Bella," he says with a pat on her head and a twinkle in his eye.

She watches him wrap his neck, tightly, in a cable scarf until toffee eyes peek out and wink. This makes her smile. The groaning wind and flurry pushing through the foyer when he leaves, however, does not.

She bundles herself into her coat and walks up to the window, where she watches Arthur shovel around and push aside the fallen branch. It looks bulky and heavy but he doesn't have trouble casting it aside like a meddlesome splinter.

The sky, winged in fleecy velvet and looking fashionable for morning or late afternoon, keeps poker-faced in its time-telling, still and guarded from the short and long hands of the clock.

_How long have I been out here?_

She wishes she wore a watch.

Arthur guessed right, she is suffering from a terrible case of cabin fever. But in this foyer – a no man's land between her past and her future – she wants to recalibrate, reset, and return from the tangents she's become.

She's tired of wearing the wrong skin.

She looks to the dark space under the stairwell and can envision a mocking, rocking Bella spinning inside-out from this emotional circus. Or in the corner of the room, there's Bella, the cowering flower, crying and snotting into her sleeve. Or how about there, pressed up against his door, the Bella that pleads for release from the whispering madness.

She purses her lips and rolls her eyes, finishing with a melodramatic groan.

She's not those floundering girls.

This is her. The here-and-now-Bella. Her-father's-daughter-Bella.

"Bells." She can hear her father's silvery voice before he passed away in his chair.

She wishes he were here, but all she is left with are memories to clear the debris in her head:

_A troop of foxes startled her one day during an old January ushered in by fresh snow. She wore her favorite boots, and jammies under ski pants, and the Christmas-gift flannel jacket that she asked for because her dad wore one. It came from the boy's department, but she loved it just fine. They were out ice fishing; she wanted to slide on the ice and tempt the shallow areas where the fish swam under foggy glass, but her dad set her to work on skimming the slush as it formed in the hole throughout the day and to pouring the hot chocolate, sometimes with, sometimes without, marshmallows. _

_She caught sight of a kit fox, auburn hair, full-white tail, sniffing at the edge of the lake and looking up; it regarded her. "What's wrong, kid?" She had latched on to her dad's arm as the rest of the troop ventured from beyond the snow-covered evergreens. _

_He followed her line of vision. "Come here," he said, scooping her up and onto his lap, the folding chair plenty sturdy for both of them. The line had been cast and the red flag on the tip-up bobbed in the drilled hole. Bella pointed a child's finger at the foxes, staring in wonder and worked-up fright. _

"_They're called a troop, Bells. See the big one? That's the dad and the grayer one must be the mom. She's called a vixen."_

"_I like the little one," she whispered into his neck, watching them under her lashes._

"_Of course you do," his chest rumbled. He pointed to the smallest one, tucked behind his mother's tail. "That one's a kit."_

"_A kid?"_

"_No, a kit. They like to stay together and keep each other safe. They fight for each other. A family, like us."_

"_But we don't have a vixen." She reminded him with an exasperated puff._

_Point taken, he hugged her tight (made her squirm, it almost hurt). "No, we don't," he said, turning his eyes to the red flag in the icy water, where it bobbed and teetered a bit drunkenly. "But we have each other, and we're a family. Don't forget that. You and me, kid."_

"_We stay together and keep each other safe," she mantra'd._

"_Yup. That we do. C'mon now, you're getting heavy and you need to skim."_

_She jumped off and skidded around to the opposite side of the hole, poking the slivered ice. "Can we eat it?" she asked, scooping it into her small palm. _

"_No."_

_And she listened. _

She remembers the girl she used to be, the one her dad loved so much, and smiles. The girl before grief and marriage dissolved her into a withering thing. But no more.

It's blunt, the little ache, but useful because she knows that if she walks out of that building, it will be the end to her story: righting other people's children, cooking too much pasta for one, hanging her days on coat racks, fumbling with groceries, keys, and a door with no extra-hands; wishing as hard as the next girl.

_What happened?_

She was set to tell Edward yesterday morning. She had called Rose from the coffee-shop and said, "I'm going to do it. I'm ready."

But then his face. His body. His whiskey. Their fear.

_That's the distraction, Edward._

She practices the words in a hushed voice reserved for prayers (and his possible responses):

"_Edward, I'm divorced."_

"_Bella, all I want is be with you."_

She considers this with a little side-smile, but shakes it off. Maybe not that easy.

Again, with levity. He may like that:

"_Edward, I've been divorced for three months, and we can have babies now."_

"_Have you seen my pants?"_

She'd like to look for his pants, but no.

Again, simple and with her chest wide open:

"_Edward, I'm no longer married and I want us to try and be together."_

"_I don't know, Bella, if I want to."_

Her stomach turns because this is the scenario she fears the most.

She looks at Edward's door.

She looks out the window into the street, where the snow has abated. Arthur has cleared the path to the sidewalk.

She can't stay in this foyer forever and she fears the freeze in her life if she leaves without giving them both a chance.

_I can't do this, live like this and wonder anymore._

She can hear muffled noises in Edward's apartment. Her throat swells dry at the thought of the risk she's going to take. Her head is cotton, her body lead.

To hell with it; she's going to lead with her thundering heart.

The truth, singular and pure as a promise, is the best she can offer him.

She's done pacing, she's done mulling. She wants to start over, rip the seam off and unravel it so she can mend it her way.

_It's my turn._

Straightening her spine, stepping up to where she needs to be, she marches to his door and curls a fist.

* * *

A/N:

Credit to CM and WriteOnTime for patience and stealing my knife when I want to cut a fic.


	12. Shedding

**Shedding**

**XxX**

Bella's fist flies through the air, never touching wood.

Edward stands in front of her, so tall, with an arm in the sleeve of his jacket, and clutching a cell phone in the other.

They're both surprised. His eyes hold relief, hers hope.

He shrugs on his jacket and slips his phone in a pocket. "I've been calling you, but it keeps going to voicemail. Where's your cell?"

"The battery must have died."

He nods, worrying his hair into stiff cowlicks. He finally looks her in the eye. His tone rides on neutral. "Look, I shouldn't have let you leave like that. I'll give you a ride. I can shovel out and we can take the main roads."

Oh, he still wants this over. She bites the pulp inside her cheek, suppressing the impulse to give in but she's here now, and he's dressed, not smiling – resigned. This morning, she would have interpreted it as indifference, but she's not ready to believe that. Not now.

"I don't want to go," she says, squaring up, getting taller. He runs both hands through his hair and across his face, shaking his head. His eyes are rimmed red and his clothes are rumpled like the worry lines around his eyes.

That gives her a little hope, but he's yet to invite her in. She can't have that.

She pushes past him and takes off her coat.

He's astonished. "Hey, what are you doing? We can't do this. I can't do this," he pleads, but her face is stubborn.

She holds her hands up to him. "I'm not asking for anything. All I ask is that you hear me out."

"Hear what out? You're married," he spits out impatiently. "What more do I need to know?"

In the context of these four walls, his words are accusation. They puncture her with a dose of shame for withholding the truth.

Her mind is made up.

She paces in the main room where the bed is made – crisp cotton folded neatly at the corners and tucked in. He's picked up, the coffee table is righted, the bottles missing, and the floor swept.

The yesterday is gone.

This sets her right on the inside, too, but he wouldn't know it from her face, painted in ire. Her pale cheeks are flushed red as if poppies have burst under her skin.

He falters.

"You need to know me from the beginning."

"You. Married. That's the beginning, the middle, and the end. No past, no present, no future. Don't you get that?" His voice rises like he's trying to be heard from drowning in the only absolute he knows.

She has never seen his face utterly distressed. She put that there. She has to take it away.

"No, that's not all of it." She moves closer as he hesitates by the open door. "Edward, please, just hear me out. Close the door. If you want to end this afterward, fine," she lies.

He's never been so frightened in his life. He saw her not long ago, but her face holds a lightness he can't recall ever seeing. She is terrifyingly stunning.

Mute and guarded, he closes the door. He feels caged.

She sits on the edge of the coffee table with her back to the weather channel. He sheds his jacket slowly, settling on the couch.

"We've never brought up our pasts. But we need to now."

"I don't really want to know."

"You don't know anything." She's tired of her voice and heart getting locked out before she can explain herself. She continues quick and clear, "I was born in Washington, too. Forks, actually."

The name sounds oddly familiar to him. "What?"

"Forks. It's North of Seattle," she explains.

"I'm from Seattle."

"Yeah, I know. You told me once," she says, smiling softly to an image he painted for her, once, of visiting the Space Needle when he was five years old. He used to balance his belly over the guard rail in the observation deck, and pretend to fly like a float plane into the Cascade Range, over the snow-capped beauty of Mt. Rainier. All the while, he wore a Superman costume that he donned for a year (to the frustration of his mother).

The little red cape, he said, made him feel safe.

"Go on," he urges, listening now.

"Forks. That's where I met my ex – "

"Don't say it," he interrupts, retreating and running hands on his thighs, wanting to be elsewhere. "Don't say his name. Not here."

Chastened, she tries again, bringing her tale into focus.

"Okay. Alright, then. When I was growing up, it was just me and my dad. My mom died when I was a baby. " At the saddening of his eyes, she hurries on. "No, it's okay. It's not the story I want to tell you. I hardly remember her anyway." She shrugs out the awkwardness of her confession. She is self-conscious of how detached she must sound to him.

"My dad was the Chief of Police, and everyone knew him. It's a small town, all blue-collar. Not much happened. I guess you can say we were all pretty sheltered. He was popular with everyone. Even the PTA ladies, who had a thing for a man in uniform and a mustache, would run out to his cruiser and pass him cookies."

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

Edward listens, inert behind his wall, waiting.

"Anyway, even the waitresses at the diner loved him. He went for breakfast every morning and when I was out of school for the summer, he'd take me with him. They even knew my order."

"Let me guess."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't yuck my yum. I hate yolks when they're runny. Now, you know. I didn't have many friends and I was close to my dad. It never bothered me. He fished a lot with his friend, Billy, and it was through Billy that I met him. One day my dad brings home this scrawny kid to our house and leaves him for me to babysit. He was only two years younger than me. We grew up together. He was my best friend."

Edward's no longer looking at her, trying to keep away from her eyes, afraid of what he'll see. He stares past her but she waves into his face and gently tells him to stick with her.

How much he wants to, is an increasingly heavy load. "Go ahead."

"He was no more to me than a friend, at least, not until Dad died from a stroke. I was 19." She pushes out the last part because she's working on one heart ache at a time. Her short nails leave crescent marks on her palm.

It tears at him that he can't be the one to comfort her. "I'm sorry, Bella."

"Edward, you have to know that that's not the story I want to tell, either. I'm tired of being sad, okay? I got married young and for the wrong reasons. It seemed like the next step, and I was on my own. It seemed natural.

"I married him when I was 21 and that was six years ago, but it seems like a different lifetime, like it happened to someone else. We moved here after Dad died and I thought that would help. It did. I was lucky to have Rose move here, too. She's my best friend and has shouldered so much of my shit.

"Anyway, it was comforting to have him with me, and uncomplicated, but we became no more than roommates over the years. Life was measured by the sound of alarms for me. The alarm clock in the morning," she started counting off on her fingers. "The bells at school, the oven alarm as I made dinner, all of it was one big noisy room. It drove me crazy. We sought counseling, and nothing came of it. Even when I stopped feeling anything for him, I still tried."

He breathes through his nose, trying to keep his pain from barking out at her, wondering when she'll get to it.

"I was long done with my marriage when I met you."

His face twists like he's lost his place and reached the wrong page in a book. Her body stills.

"What are you saying?"

"The night I met you, Rose and I were celebrating. We'd gone to the courthouse earlier in the day for the divorce papers. I filled them out and that was it. I never looked back. I'd never done anything like that and I'd never wanted anything more. I'm no longer married. I haven't been, actually…"

"Wait. Wait." He pushes up and paces, gesturing that she should slow down. Her words ring in his ear, too fucking loud to understand. She watches him try to piece it together, unsure if this is the end for them. She bides her time, waiting out the storm, and hoping it keeps away from her.

He doesn't look any calmer than before.

The ring, he thinks. Then why? She's not married?

"Since when?" His body is moving, zipping, cranking up the part of his brain that can register what she's saying.

"Since three months ago, around Thanksgiving. That's why I couldn't meet up with you. I was wrapping things up and moving out. I have my own place now, it's…"

"Three months, Bella?"

He doesn't care where she's moved to, he's been living in his own nuthouse since he met her.

She cringes at the unspoken accusation. "I wasn't ready," she tells her shoes, folding into herself for the first time since she returned to him. It is the only excuse she has, however feeble. But, finally, it is true.

He looks at her, this new girl.

"Not ready? And the ring? Why do you still wear that fucking ring?" He's had nightmares over it, visions of it everywhere he goes, or when her name pops up unbidden at the worst moments – with his family, on the expedition, during the dangerous part of night.

Fuck, last night, he thinks back with disgust and shame. His skin feels hot and tight.

This is out of control, he's losing it, she thinks. _I'm losing him._

"What ring? I haven't worn it since the night I met you. I put it away, remember?"

No, he doesn't. He thinks back to yesterday morning, to when she first left, but the image of her with a ring on is fuzzy. Shit, he's gone insane.

She's not done talking about it. "I mean, God, I was so stupid to come up to you wearing it, and let's not get into how petrified I was that I'd forgotten it. I didn't plan on going home with you, or anyone, that night. I was going to take it off after the divorce."

"All this time. You could have told me. It would have mattered."

She perks up. "Would it?"

He ignores her question. She wants to hear the declarations he's never been allowed to own.

Or, he doesn't hear it. It's consumed by months of disappointing his family; of hating himself for the madness she's invoked; of resenting her and desiring her all at once.

The news overwhelms him, and he doesn't know what to do with it.

He needs to know. "What do you want then? You got your say, now what?"

"I want a chance, with you. I don't want us to end. I want to start over."

She gets up, moving toward him, wiping sweaty hands on her back pockets.

He retreats, and flops down on the bed with his head in his hands. He's stuck – spinning wheels – and trying to catch up from being left behind in the telling of her story. It's as if he's the last person in the world to know.

Bella watches him wrestle with the news. He looks like a soldier returned home from a war, and having won, is too shell-shocked and jaded to celebrate.

"I didn't know how to tell you before. I didn't know if it would matter to you."

It matters, but he can't speak.

Everything matters: his own contribution to this mess, the time wasted, the stress.

It matters.

No, she doesn't know, but look at him. He's slumped over, his sure posture weighed down and he's never looked so boyish and tender. She aches, but not so much for herself anymore. No part of this day feels like it has anything to do with her.

It's about him.

Instinctively, she reaches out and runs her hand through his hair.

He winces. A shiver climbs its way up his legs, to his shoulders. She pulls back and wills him to come back to her, smile at her, tell her it will be okay.

"Are we…are you okay?"

As Emmett would say, he is far from fucking okay. He wants to be wrapped up in her body. He wants her to step away.

So much has changed since the night he met her, when he sucked on her neck in the cab back to his place, and had her clothes off before they fell into his bed. His thoughts, then, were to devour her for the short hours he was allowed.

That night, he blocked out the concept of _more_.

So much has changed. Night and day. Black and white. Then and now.

And it's those lost hours, the gray, and the in-between that's burned him going down.

_She's not married?_

She's so close; if he moves forward, the crown of his head would meet her square in the belly. His eyes are half-open on the seam of her white Henley.

He's too tired to talk. He knows they need to.

He wants to reach out, pull her in, and take.

He wants her stillness.

He wants her.

But he gets none of it.

Bella's belly grumbles.

And someone else is banging at his fucking door.

* * *

A/N: props to CM and WriteOnTime for steering me right.


	13. Roast

**Roast**

**XxX**

Three sharp knocks.

_Don't leave me._

Insistent – tapping out a tattoo. They might as well be gunfire, explosive in his loft, reverberating through his body.

His first thought, born from panic, is the first thing that's made sense all day: _Don't leave me._

Edward's heart rattles, immediately startled. Who could it be? For a fleeting second he imagines her taken away from him.

Yesterday and Tomorrow start at opposite ends of his body, from toes to head. They pin-ball and bounce in his bones, banging and clanging; spiriting him forward, pushing him into the Present until all doubt gives way in one stuttering breath with her name on it.

"Bella."

Three sharp knocks.

Bella's eyes shift from the door to Edward, desperate to know her time's not over yet. Her urgency is frenzied as if she's pushing from door to door to door – bypassing her father, her ex, and her loneliness, until she comes to Edward's door, opens it and finds this cracked-open man sitting in front of her.

There is no time. She needs to know. "Do you still want me to go?"

"No." He's quick with it, and leaves her no room to question. He gets up, and in a roughened voice, as if he's just awakened, he tells her what she needs to hear. "Don't leave. I…we need to talk."

It matters, he knows. But she matters most of all.

She nods, relieved, and he turns to answer the door.

**XxX**

Annoyed, Edward throws the door open to find his smiling neighbor.

"Hello, I'm Arthur. 2B."

Arthur puts out a gnarled paw, twisted up around the knuckles. It's attached to a 6'5" old oak with a toothy grin and candid eyes.

Edward shakes his hand and cranes his neck past Arthur, searching for more interruptions.

The foyer is drafty and empty.

Arthur studies the young man who's been coming and going for months with nary a smile for his neighbors who live right above him. A worn-in smirk adorns Arthurs face.

Edward points to the house number on his front door. "Edward. 1A. Nice to meet you, Arthur," he clears his throat, reining himself in. "What can I do for you?"

The edge around Edward's eyes would warn off any other fool, but Arthur has faced tougher men and Edward's brusque manner falls flat.

Not to mention, there's a young lady in here who looked a bit hungry to him earlier. He's sure.

"The news people were saying that we have a few more hours of this yet. So I'd thought I'd go around and check on everyone."

"Oh, we're fine," says Edward, glad that this is what the knocking is about. "Thanks." He starts to close his door.

Arthur's body moves slightly, wedging him between the door and foyer. Other than Bella Swan, he hasn't truly conversed with anyone in days.

"I think it'll let up," continues Arthur. The weather is the typical start to a story for him, not hello. "They never know what they're talking about, the weather guys. I came down from Shirley Cope's place in 2C. She's elderly you know, and she thought the same thing."

"I'm sorry, Arthur, but what did you – "

"Hi, Arthur." Bella's voice pops out from beneath Edward's arm, which is leaning on his open door. She gives Arthur a sweet smile.

"Bella Swan, young lady, how are you?"

"You know each other?" asks Edward, glancing at each of them, feeling left out.

Again.

"We met in the foyer." It is then that it dawns on Edward: he never knew where she went off to.

"You never left?" His eyes search her bright ones.

"No, um, the walk was…there was snow and –" before she trips on awkwardness, she changes the subject and addresses Arthur. "Did you get your exercise, Arthur?"

Edward is convinced that Arthur's face is attached to Bella's mood because there's an intensity about it, like he's trying to figure something out.

"I did and more. Listen, you two, I have a pot roast that's been going all morning. I know you wanted to get out a bit, but before you go outside, I thought maybe you'd like to come up and join me for lunch. It's Dorothy's recipe, which means that it's enough to feed an army. What do you say?"

Poised to decline, Edward's taken aback when Bella pipes up.

"We'd love some, Arthur. I'm starving," she says, relieved for food. Confessing is big work.

"Hold on, now."

She casually pats Edward on the belly with all the normalcy of a woman caretaking for her man. "Sure you can eat."

She's desperate to get them out of this loft, where the walls are still shouting. "Besides, there's no food here, and it wouldn't hurt us for to get out."

He can't disagree. Her stomach is talking to them loudly, and she didn't eat breakfast. He tries not to think about the morning and how he made her leave. He tries harder not to think about the reasons why he had to let her go. Instead, he recalls the yellow yolk bleeding on her plate and the cutting details that don't make up the whole of her.

_What else does he not know?_

Although it's the last thing he wants to do, the walls around him are stifling, and Arthur seems like a nice enough guy.

He hopes he won't regret this. "Okay," he turns to his well-meaning neighbor, "we'll be glad to join you."

"It's settled then." Arthur rubs his hands in anticipation, glad they worked it out. "You don't mind coming up in, say, five minutes? The roast will be out by then."

They agree and send him on his way with an extra hop in his step.

Edward's reclining against the wall in the same break-up pose from this morning, arms crossed, regarding her. It's been one hell of a day and he doesn't know if he's coming or going.

Every time she's come through his door, he's noticed something different about her.

Gone is the choked-up woman from yesterday's first snow, the teasing girl from the afternoon, and the siren from last night. She's dressed for comfort, in a long-sleeved Henley and pants. She's dressed to stay.

_She's dressed to stay._

Her hair has come loose and it drapes her shoulders, the natural part in the center frames her face so it's the only thing he sees. Her eyes, clear, are a shade of brown unknown to him. Her heart-shaped face, wide at the cheeks, is bare.

She looks like a young and frazzled flower on strong, even limbs.

And she's determined not to let this be a repeat. She puts her hands on his arms and asks his chest. "Are we okay?"

He is the sudden reflection between smiling and screaming. "Okay" is a good word, he thinks. Simple, implying nothing but a short truce. And time.

"You're really not married?"

"I'm really, really not married."

"You could have told me."

"Would it have mattered?"

He doesn't want to relive the shame of the last few months. "I never liked being that guy, Bella. Another man's wife?"

And his hypocrisy makes her snap. She can't hold back her own whipping accusation.

"You came, every time, and met me in spite of it."

His voice is even, low. "Yeah, that's the thing of it, isn't it? I came back, every time. Breaking down, every time." He's said too much, speaking from the deep end and struggling yet with a new question. _Would he have ever dared?_

Suddenly, he's thankful for Arthur's offer.

She latches on to his last words, _breaking down, _and glimpses under the coil that has wrapped him these last few months. Slowly sorting through her memories, she views the touch of madness that has made him distant and unrecognizable – this morning's man, last night's cold stranger.

And the guilt swivels back. _Did she have a hand in that?_

Regardless of the unspoken hurt and fear, she wants nothing more than to stay.

"I'm sorry."

She's sorry; he thinks he's sorry, too, but for what he doesn't know yet.

He rubs a hand up and down her shoulder. It's the best reassurance he can give her until they sort things out.

He grins. "C'mon, we can talk about this later," he pushes off the wall, "or your stomach will be the next thing knocking on my door."

It's been so tense, she can't help but chuckle at his teasing. She punches him on the arm. "Hey!"

Taking her entire fist in his hand (she hits like a girl or her heart's not into it, he can't decide) he gently shoves her out the door.

Together they climb up to 2B.

**XxX**

Three units comprise the whole of the Victorian, although Edward never paid mind to such a thing. His life, purposely nomadic and sporadic, leaves no time for the passing of hellos from neighbor to neighbor.

He's never climbed up the carpeted, winding stairs leading to the second floor, where Shirley Cope, a retired school administrator – with the awards on her wall to prove it and children who never visit – lives.

Then there is 'Arthur 2B', who resides across the hall from her.

It is on his door that Bella knocks. Behind her, Edward allows himself to ride along. She knows she is leading and carrying on for the two of them.

"C'mon in, kids. Everything's just about ready."

Arthur's space, unlike Edward's, is filled with all things for the living: photographs exposed on walls, mantles, and side tables. Yellow/green ficus and frilly ivy leaves flower out from hanging baskets on the ceiling. Any space that can be covered is ornamented in lace, doily, crochet, or fleece. They step around a Lazy-boy and a patterned couch with foot-stools, which share space with a makeshift dining area for four.

Bella and Edward notice two things, in no particular order: it is fucking steaming hot in Arthur's place, and the smell of roasted meat wafting from the kitchen is enticingly mouthwatering.

Discreetly, they fan themselves with the collars of their shirts.

"Make yourselves at home. Come, come."

Bella is smiling into a black and white photograph perched on the fireplace mantle. Frames are lively with shots of two people clearly in love. Every pose is an action or reaction to the other.

A young woman with black hair secured at the sides with ivory combs beams up into the face of a smirking Arthur. His lips are permanently crooked at one end like he's the only one privy to the punch line of a good joke.

Bella is taken by the intensity of the woman's blue eyes. "Is this your wife? Is this Dorothy?" She swings her head around, looking for the woman in the picture.

"Probably," Arthur calls from the kitchen and walks out wiping his hands on an apron. "Let's see. Yeah, that's her."

"Is she joining us?" Edward's voice startles Bella, she did not hear him approach and her stomach dips into that teenage feeling, secretly thrilling.

"No, no. She passed away, bless her."

A double-chorus of "I'm sorry" passes through the apartment.

Arthur waves it off. "I miss her, kids. I do, but we were ready for it." His tone is reserved for one comforting guests at the door of the wake. "Cancer, you know."

Bella can't stop staring at the bluest eyes, stark and open, with streaks of silver in them. "She's beautiful."

Arthur coughs and nods his head, forgetting to breathe.

Edward takes the picture from Bella and looks closely, squinting. "Is that a Studebaker?"

"1965 Lark. Black, white-top. Best of their line. Dorothy loved it, said it looked like as shiny as my shoes." Arthur takes the picture and his teeth are as broad as piano keys under his mustache. "I'll never understand her logic, but who was I to complain. I got the car. And the girl. C'mon. Let's eat."

As they move into the dining area, Bella wonders out loud. "How did you and Dorothy meet?"

Edward wishes she would let it go, guessing this is a touchy topic for Arthur, who is obviously still in love with his wife.

But he doesn't need to worry; her question takes a quick back seat to the food.

"Holy cow."

Bella and Edward stand gawking at the feast in front of them. Their jaws drop comically and both lick their lips. 'What a pair', observes Arthur to himself with a pleased smirk.

On the center of the table, he has set out a Dutch oven brimming with tender knuckle-sized beef coated in rich gravy, dotted with green peas, finger-sized carrots, whole baby potatoes, and slivers of sliced onions. Beside it sits a basket of rolls fresh from the oven. The stick of butter next to it softened.

"Sit, sit. Eat. You two look like it's the first food you've seen in years. I always did love this recipe but it's not award-winning."

The two lovebirds awkwardly navigate the chrome dining table. She grabs a chair, and then realizes he's pulled one out for her. She accepts it shyly and he slides her in. He brushes the tops of her shoulders.

Sparkling water and Ginger Ale are set out before them. Edward offers her some water from a glass pitcher, but she points to the Ginger Ale.

They might as well have a Chianti bottle stabbed with long-stemmed white candles sit between them, thinks an amused Arthur.

He starts to hand them each a portion, but from the way they take to the rolls and butter, he backtracks and loads up their bowls even further.

There go the leftovers.

Arthur sits back and watches them tuck in like starved children, glad they're not mindful of formality. He misses his wife and, if he's honest with himself, a little companionship on a day like today.

Edward coats his potato with more gravy and butter. "Arthur, this is by far the best beef stew I've ever had. Please don't tell my mother."

Bella and Arthur laugh. "I mean it," says Edward nervously.

Arthur's eyes are shiny slits of pride. "It was Dorothy's."

Bella mouth is filled with stew when she looks at him with the same question in her eyes, chewing quickly so she can get it out.

But Arthur beats her to it. "You asked how we met." He grins at Bella's chipmunk cheek. "It's a long story, but I think we have a little time."

He waits for argument, but the kids settle in further, clearly preferring to eat rather than lead in conversation.

"I met Dorothy when she sold me bologna."

Twin bemusement stares back at him.

"Her father owned the butcher shop down by the warehouse where I took up a job. I was, I don't know, twenty-two then. Back then you could get a job so long as you were willing to work hard and had a bit of muscle. Seeing as I'd been boxing for a couple of years already, it didn't take long for me to get a job at a warehouse, moving around sacks of flour and whatnot. I'd just moved to town with nothing more than a few books and the clothes on my back. I was staying with my friend, Benny, in a one-bedroom apartment blocks away from work – icebox, sink, and a poker table. That's it. One day Benny tells me to get down to the butcher shop. I had a few coins from my first week on the job and decide we're going dine on sandwiches. I walk in, and you know the bell in every shop, right above the door?"

"Sure," says Edward, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows and pausing to hear the story. His arm touches hers. Bella tries to concentrate on the story and not his heat or his skin tickling her wrist. She reaches for more butter and Edward hands it to her with a small smile.

"Well, you would think I rang a bell ordering up the most beautiful girl in the world," speaks Arthur as one who never let the moment fade away into past.

"From the back room walked out this vision in a dress and apron. Her hair was combed behind her ears with waves and a shine. I was partial to blondes up until that day. Never met a blonde that held my attention since.

"Anyway, I stood there like a putz while she watched me sputter out my order. I think I ordered the capicola, the most expensive thing in the shop, like a real idiot. I only had fifty cents on me when she packed it up and passed my order to me. 'That's seventy-five cents,' she tells me, and I take out my quarters and dig back in my pocket like I got more in there. I don't. But it doesn't take long for her to figure out I'm flat broke.

"She probably thinks I'm just another schmuck looking for charity. I'm sweating. She's about to say something when out booms a man's voice: 'Dorothy? What's taking you so long? Get back here and help me with this order.' It's her dad, and now he's made his way to the front, sharpening his fucking sickle. Sorry, Bella, excuse my language, but I still get nightmares over that shiny knife of his. He's giving me this mean look, real sharp. I might as well fall apart in slices. I'm ready to tell them that I'll come back with the rest when my angel speaks up and tells him everything is fine. She takes my money and pushes the order to me, sending me on my way. Her dad gives me one good stink eye for the road, and I high tail it out of there.

"How's the roast?"

Bella and Edward take a moment to chew and swallow. Their bowls have straggling veggies in sauce. Arthur spoons more into their bowls.

"It's alright. I'm glad you like it." He smiles, continuing with his story. "So every day, I go to the butcher shop and order the same thing – bologna. I make sure to get my order right each time. And every day, there's a little something different about Dorothy. We don't talk much, but she gives me these wide smiles when she sees me, and sometimes, she'd add a few slices of capicola to my order.

"One day, I walk in and she's wearing this white dress with little red flowers on it (no apron, thank the good mother). I have to tell you, Edward, you'd appreciate this, but the way her thighs flared out below her belt, whew, a Coca-Cola bottle." Arthur whistles in appreciation.

Bella and Edward look at each other and laugh, falling into a dreamy languor.

"Then another day, she's got her hair down, beautiful. Another day, she's got these red lips like she's eaten a bowl of maraschinos. Another day, she's wearing heels! You get the point.

"Now, I'm thinking: 'This is it, Arthur, ask the girl out.' So, I go back to the shop, dressed up in a suit I borrowed from Benny, my hair combed back, you understand. I get to the shop and she's nowhere to be seen. I'm craning my neck to peek in the back, past the swinging doors, when I hear her sister talking to her dad. They're talking about Dorothy. Dorothy who, I find out, isn't working that day because she's on a date. A date!"

He slaps his palm on the table, worked up over a passed-away memory.

Bella and Edward take sips of their drinks, the heat creeping up into their scalps. She gulps hers down and reaches for more before she gets to the bottom of her glass. Edward has eyes for her fingers, wrapped around the sweaty glass. He wipes the back of his neck.

"Her dad met some fancy pants lawyer guy and set them up," Arthur continues on.

"They were arguing about something, Dorothy's sister and her dad, but by then I'd heard enough. I turned around to leave – a man can only take so much before he has to throw in the towel. I was pitiful and the fight hadn't even started. Here's my girl, probably getting serenaded in a rowboat by some other guy, making her laugh.

"I've taken my share of hits. See this cut right here on my chin? That one damn near took my jaw off, and my career with it. That's the kind of thing I dealt with every day – busted ribs, cracked knuckles, you name it. My point is, nothing hurt, nothing brought me down like the day I heard Dorothy was being courted by a different guy."

"What happened?" asks Bella.

Edward nudges her to quit interrupting. She sticks her tongue out at him. He pokes her in the rib.

"I'm about to head out when her sister calls me back. 'You Arthur?' she asks me. I tell her 'Yeah', and she's looking at me like we're in a hospital and she's in charge of delivering the heartbreak. I must have looked a mess. 'Dorothy knew you were coming today and she wanted me to give you this,' and she slips me my order, my usual bologna in that stiff white butcher paper. I'm thinking, 'Bologna? Well, of course, bologna, you moron, what else would she give you?'

"I take it home and stick it in the freezer with the rest of the bricks. I couldn't get through all that bologna, not even with Benny as my roommate. But after months of filling it, the freezer door wouldn't close. Packages fall out. I'm convinced – it's a sign. I don't need to be going back to that shop anymore.

"I unwrap the one from that day, ready to throw out the meat, when I see a scribble on the inside. It's a note. It's a note in Dorothy's hand, and in her pretty handwriting, she tells me: 'Don't give up. Wait for me.'"

Arthur pauses and recalls how he gave the note a dozen passes before its meaning put a determined look on his face, as well as a golden smile.

Bella sits back, belly full, sweeping her hair into a bun on her left shoulder, catching it with her slim fingers. Edward eyes her clammy neck, and suddenly, he's back at the karaoke bar wishing she'd sit closer.

The memory recharges his heart rate as if the anticipation has carried over for the last six months. And on her finger, there is no ring. Not a trace, not a tan line, or a faint indentation.

Edward's throat is as dry as the bottom end of a roll. He drinks greedily from his glass.

Arthur picks up the story. "'Wait for me', she said. And what do you think I did?"

"What?" Bella's glad to use her voice as a distraction from the heat. Now that she's full, it's uncomfortable.

"I took myself, and my borrowed suit, and went to see her father the same day. She must have been waiting for me, because when I get to the gate in front of her courtyard, she comes running out with a knockout smile. 'Finally' she says. Finally! Like I'm a mind reader – finally! Women. No offense, Bella Swan, but sometimes a guy needs a nudge, you know."

He elbows Edward in cheerful solidarity and digs in to his meal. All the young man can do is force out an awkward chuckle, lightly glaring at Bella. But that's short-lived. A drop of sauce is in her hair and Edward reaches over, clearing it with his fingers. He stares at the sauce collected at the corner of her mouth and her tongue darts out self-consciously.

She's entirely warmed over by Arthur's story, the food, the too-hot apartment, and Edward.

A lone trail of sweat trickles along her neck, and detours past her collar like a broken, dangled necklace.

He stares at that, too, and she wills him to stop acting inappropriately. She fiddles with her napkin, shifts in her seat. He grins, licks his fingers and sits back, eyeing the onions swimming in stew, smiling his own private smile.

All the tension she harbors is laced in her next statement to Arthur. "But you could have told her sooner, given her a clue," she protests.

Arthur's spoon is halfway to his mouth. He looks at her, considering. "I suppose that's true," he carefully agrees. "But if she were here, she'd tell you, it wouldn't make for a good story, now would it? Besides, Dorothy had little patience for 'woulda, shoulda, couldas'. She was a spitfire, that one."

He winks at her. He has a ghost of a smile remembering the arguments with Dorothy – every version different – over who should have done what first. He wishes she were here arguing with him now. But wishes are for people with no past, and he has enough to fill a home.

Arthur looks over his table and chuckles at the aftermath. "Looks like the stew did you both some good."

The place is sweltering and Bella needs a distraction from the moisture running down her back. "It was amazing. And I'm glad you finally got your Dorothy. I guess it doesn't matter how," she shrugs, uncommitted. "She sounds like a wonderful woman."

"That she was, that she was," he says between bites of food, having worked up his hunger.

Under the table, Edward reaches for Bella's hand. She threads her fingers through his and squeezes. He squeezes back and sets their joined hands on the table, surfacing.

* * *

A/N:

As always, my absolute gratitude to the women who ensure I don't make a total horse's ass of myself - WriteOnTime and Cesca Marie.


	14. Thaw

**Thaw**

**XxX**

"He is so nice. I can't believe you've never met Arthur before."

They're ambling down the stairs with full bellies, Bella following. The draft in the foyer is a welcome change from the heat in Arthur's apartment.

After promises of stopping in more often, he sent them on their way, and thanked them for the company. He gave Bella a too-long kiss on the cheek. Edward was inclined to cough.

"I've seen him around but," Edward shrugs, "I'm hardly ever here. I'll probably stop in and ask him about his boxing days, though."

Bella pauses at the juncture of the stairs. He's reached the bottom step and her body heat cools behind him.

She's nervous now, her stomach turning at the thought of what it means to have him gone – maybe for a short while, or worst – for good. "Will you be traveling again soon?"

He hears it in her tone and he knows. It's time to settle accounts and sort out what part of this crazy mess belongs to whom, and what the hell to do with it.

He looks up and reaches a hand out for her. She walks down a few steps and takes it.

She is eye level.

"You're really not married?"

"I've told you. It's all out, all of it. I'm not married." She gets closer, willing him to make the next move, one way or another.

"You're sweating," he says softly, touching a damp tendril on her neck.

"It was stuffy up there. Hot. And you're avoiding this," she says impatiently. Her story has been spilled forth in front of him and she's going nuts wondering what he's going to do about it.

But he is still smarting about the time she's taken away from them. From the slow and natural progression of a courtship and into the declaration he's just now allowing into his heart. The door is open, he sees where he wants them to be, but the irritation is as bad as the heat upstairs.

He turns his head, and she thinks he's going to let her down, but he's looking outside. It's stopped snowing and the sky is milky – still.

He tugs her hand. "Let's go outside."

She snatches it back. "What? No! It's freezing out." She looks down at her clothes. "We don't have our coats."

"C'mon," he says, walking across the foyer, backwards. "We have time to talk, right?"

"Yes, but…"

His back is to the door, ready to push. "No 'buts'. C'mon, wuss."

He looks like a boy, a suddenly playful boy. It's a side she's witnessed in bed, but not when he's fully clothed. Up until now, their moments have been wrapped up in each other's bodies. She gives in to this Edward because he's a sight to see with that taunting smile.

It suits him.

Plus, if she's honest, she hates being called a wuss.

She pulls the sleeves of her thermal down, fisting into them, and bracing herself. "Fine." Her gait is cavalier. He raises an eyebrow, impressed. "Let's get this over with."

"After you," he says, swinging his arm out with a flourish, eyes twinkling. She moves past him, narrowing her eyes.

His street is quiet and white. Neighborhood noise – muffled – presses into the soft snow piled beside the road. The shape of houses and trees, blunted under drifts, judge passively. Vehicles, lumpy versions of themselves, have been abandoned to the storm.

The streetlamps – off – line his street like unplugged boom mics.

"Oh my God!" Bella dances in place while her blood seizes up.

A strong pair of arms surround her from behind, and Edward presses her into him, snugly. "Shh."

The building's walk has been cleared, thanks to Arthur. He's shoveled the excess to either side of the lawn, creating waist-high mounds.

Bella leans back, trying to melt in to him, bone-chilled. Yet regardless of the temperature, her heart races at the contact.

He whispers in her ear. "Bella?"

"Hmm?"

And his response is to send her heart flying (body and limbs along with it) into the air – a moving picture of hair and flailing arms – into a three-foot pile of snow.

He's been dying to do that for the last hour.

She shrieks, and no one but Edward can hear her. He's chucked her deep into shoveled snow as she sputters and yells in shock.

"What the fuck, Edward!" It's not a question. She clears snow from her eyes. "What is your problem? Get me out of here."

"Three months, Bella? All this time, divorced? You have any idea the shit I've gone through? I've been worked up for nothing. What else don't I know about you? Kids, maybe?"

"That's it! Shit. That's it, nothing else. Get me…ugh, I can't believe you just did that. Jerk!"

Every attempt at tunneling out sends her flat on her ass. Her palm slips on ice as she pushes up. Her squirming digs her deeper into the icy pit. She looks like a pissed snow angel and it makes him laugh.

Loudly.

She wants to strangle him, standing in front of her, akimbo, with his stupid face.

He's delirious.

"You're maddening, woman, you know that?"

"Are you kidding me? You came back! Fuck you! You had a choice, same as me," she screams dully at him, and her irritation turns to real anger. "I wasn't ready, dammit! And you always let me in."

Her shouting recedes into a broken ache. "And this morning you shut me out."

She feels small.

It eats at him how defeated she looks. "How do you think it felt knowing you were someone else's? And yet, every chance I had, I went straight to you. Forget my family. Forget my dignity. You called. I came. I've had nothing but you on my mind since I've met you." And nothing but shame. The residual guilt, a phantom kernel, sits like a stone, but reason (and her return) tells him it's time to let go and let live.

He gives her his hand and she hauls herself up. Her hair is crusted in snow and the rest of her is in the same, furious shape. She looks at him abominably. She is livid.

He barely contains the urge to laugh.

She pushes him in the chest.

"You!" And she's not gentle. "You make it sound as if it's easy," she shoves again, forcing him to step back, "to tell you anything, mister-fucking-gregarious. How am I supposed to know what you felt? You don't speak! What am I? Maybe I was just another lay."

She shoves one more time, powerfully. "For all I know you don't want commitment and…"

"What do you mean?"

"You kicked me out this morning, dammit! You left me out and…and you fucking cleaned your place?" She gathers slush from her hair and whips it at him. When the ice stings his cheek, he flinches. "Why did I come back? I've got nothing, Edward. Nothing. No one. It's just me now. And here I thought that maybe I could tell you and maybe you'd be happy about it!"

"Bella, wait -"

She's too frantic, and too wet and cold, to care about the walls around her heart.

"Don't 'Bella, wait', me! I didn't leave, Edward. I was in that lobby." She points to the iron door. "And I thought you were worth it. That maybe, just maybe, I could do this for myself just once."

One more shove with all her might; she wants to kill him and break her own heart all at once.

One more shove and his heel slips on ice, but not before he gasps and reaches out for her, clutching her arm and sending them both into another pile.

She lands on top of him. "Oof!"

When his eyes clear, iridescent puffs of powder swirl around her face, behind her head, and settles over them in their own private snow-fort.

They blink away the flurries in shock.

They're panting raggedly, sending smoke signals from within their crushed-in cave and into the benign day.

She struggles to get up, but he holds her down. She's done with his hot and cold, tired of their self-imposed limbo. She needs to know, or go and begin her life.

With or without him.

Bella rises on her elbows and speaks in strangled hurt. "You. You've got to tell me. Tell me I'm not the only one who wants this, dammit. I'll leave, but you have to tell me to leave."

Her lashes glimmer and he reaches up to touch them. He has a case of déjà-vu, but this is real.

She is real, on top of him, and he's not deaf or dumb at this moment.

He's buried in Bella, shoved down into the snow with her body weight, cocooned and safe. His chest moves harshly from the adrenaline.

He's never breathed easier.

"No, you're not going anywhere. Don't." He holds her tighter. "I can't take it. Not again."

She tilts her head in uncertainty, so he makes it certain. "I want you. I want you. I do. I've never wanted anyone more."

He can feel the hair on his face move; she's so close. He rubs his scruff on her wet cheek. He licks his lips and swallows. "You're not just another lay. You're not just someone I pass the time with. No."

"Then what am I?"

When she speaks, the sound reverberates to his heart and it answers for him.

Wonderment thickens his voice. "A possibility."

She wants to apologize, and kick him, and give in to the weariness of their fight. She wants to let him take over now and keep her safe.

"That's good?"

He tangles her thighs in his own, wrapping her up for himself.

He wants to laugh and jump like he's coming down from a runner's high, he's bursting with wild exuberance.

"Yeah. Real good. Too good." He can't believe his luck and he's not mad enough to question it.

48 hours with her, and his insides have gone solid to jelly, repeatedly. Yet there's one thing he's been denying himself since she returned yesterday morning.

There is only one thing left for him to do.

He cranes up for his kiss.

She helps him, turning her head sideways, and responding in kind. "How good?"

He smiles against her lips in a game of Simon-says. "This."

They kiss, fragile. Their skins are numb – cheeks, toes, fingers – but they melt in relief at the contact. She whimpers soft joy in his mouth, her brows furrowed by it. He can't keep his mouth closed, he wants to smile so wide like open arms waiting for her after a long day. Wide as the sky filled with her cinnamon scent, and his veneration catches in his throat.

No, nothing is cold that can't be chipped away with an instance of sharp truths.

No, it is not cold. It is warm where they speak, where they kiss, roaming and testing, saying what they've wanted to say. Each breathing life into the one they love.

He tastes her frosty lips; she's so sweet, he can't get his fill of her. She's on top and his hands move to the back of her head, but she's got him beat. She kisses back with a grip on his shoulder, a shudder in his mouth.

She licks his lip. He sucks on her tongue.

His lips move along the side of her nose. "Your nose is cold." Her hair is icy-wet along his neck.

"Shut up. It's your fault."

He laughs, his chest bouncing her body. It's like she's on her own private ride, she's giggling so hard.

"I can't believe you did that. You threw me!" She slaps his chest half-heartedly. The fight has fizzled.

He captures her renegade hands. "Hey, hey. You deserved it." And before she can get it out, he concedes, "and I deserved it too."

There's so much more he needs to tell her, and after a show like that, how can he not?

He wants her where it's warm, warmer, warmest.

"Let's go inside."

**XxX**

She walks out of the bathroom – pink and poofy – after indulging in a scalding hot shower. She wears his clothes again – a fresh white t-shirt and his boxers.

She is drying her hair when she spots him in the kitchen guzzling down a tall glass of water. He turns around and sees her, forgetting to dry the sheen of water on his upper lip with the back of his hand.

He licks it, instead.

His first thought, 'I should get more towels' evaporates with his next thought: 'She looks fresh and young and beautiful'.

He's seen her body dozens of times in all its forms – bent, twisted, pin-wheeled, bared open, grunting, huffing into the dark.

He's seen it asleep.

But when she sets her damp feet on his floor, all he can think about are the ligaments connecting her - between her toes, the tender and taut flesh behind her knees, the webbed, pouchy skin between thumb and forefinger – spaces between her spaces.

His desire, blended with water, smoothes out his nerves so all he is left with is a spreading heat and a flush on his cheeks.

"Hey." She points at him. "Do you have a problem with clothes?"

He's stripped down to his longjohns, and barefoot. He leans his backside against the kitchen sink, bracing his hands on either side of himself.

"Not if I can help it."

It's confession time and he's nowhere near ready, but he owes her. Tit for tat, she started it.

He smiles.

Bella shakes her head and twists her hair into the towel. She's conscious of his stare and everything is so new, it makes her nervous and anxious. She can't help but laugh inside, in relief and disbelief.

_How far they've come._

A tiny smirk, of a girl having won her heart's desire, plays on her lips.

"I don't know you," he begins.

The smirk dissolves.

"Up until a few hours ago, I never entertained this." He waves between them. "Us."

He looks at her face as it worries itself into doubt; she wrings the ends of her hair in the towel tightly.

He tries not to stare at the puckered nipple creasing his shirt and the tempting body that's coming toward him. He pauses her with a finger. "Wait. You come any closer and we won't be talking."

"Is that a problem?"

He guffaws out of his beating chest. "Yeah, it's a problem. I need to concentrate and you're making it difficult. Can you be still?"

She meant if there was a problem with his newfound knowledge, but can't explain herself, having been caught off guard by the power she has over him and his acknowledgment of it.

"I'll be good."

"Good."

He keeps rubbing one foot with the heel of the other, and his vulnerable mouth opens and closes as if he's trying out his first word. She wonders if he practiced while she was showering. She stops her fidgeting.

He clears his throat.

"You used to come over at night, and leave in the morning. Today, I learned you never had to go."

"I needed the space to think for myself," she starts to argue.

He nods at the ceiling and sighs harshly.

"Maybe you did. Sure. But, for me, it was never enough. Maybe I should have said something. Maybe. Fucking maybe. I didn't think past our first night, or the second, or the one after that. It was a cakewalk at first. Until I stopped liking good-byes."

She bites her lip, contrite. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"Stop with the 'sorry'. I don't know what purpose it serves us. I was pissed that you kept me hanging like that. I…I worried Emmett, my parents with my behavior. I've never, hear me, never been so taken."

She shifts her weight into a retort, but he cuts her off. "And before you tell me that it's my choice. Yeah, I get that. We can weigh who's culpable here, but who will that help? I think we both want the same thing."

He reaches out and takes the towel out of her iron grip, the wheels in her head creaking, and he doesn't want her to second-guess him.

"But what the hell do I know? I don't know much, but I know that I won't shoot myself in the foot twice. You're no longer with your ex and what we have…well, I don't know. We're not starting from scratch here, but it feels like we are. I don't know you. I don't know about your past, except for the little you've told me. I don't know anyone outside of you, and I don't know how to talk to you. At least not like this, heart on sleeve. I don't know how or when I'm going to say everything you need to hear."

"It's okay," she says, frowning and straining to accept less than her heart's desire.

"Bella, look here."

She hadn't noticed his silent approach. He's stealthy even when he shadows over her. The waistline of his loungewear appears in her peripheral, followed by his fingers lifting her chin up.

It's time to try the one thing he's only dreamt about or entertained while drunk.

He kisses one damp eye. "But I want to," he says.

He kisses her other eye, closed; her lashes feather across his lip. He speaks into them in a reverent voice.

"I want to be that guy for you. You want declarations; you want to know what I'm thinking or how I feel about you."

His hands are on her face. "I'll tell you. I will. Ask, I'll tell you. I'm done denying you and I'm sure as hell done denying myself. I'm sorry about last night." His eyes squeeze shut and his face scrunches like it bit on a sour recollection. She palms his cheek. "I'm sorry about this morning. But I'm done being sorry about you."

Her fingers swipe his eyes open and his gentle, green gaze is exposed as a still ocean.

She tells him how it is, how she wants it to be. "It's okay."

Their gazes alternate between lips, and cheeks, and eyes, but the pull remains in the space between them, gravitational and true.

He needs her to know this much. "I never regretted that. I've never regretted any minute I've spent with you."

He searches her face for anything, but it's frozen in place. If he has to give her more at this moment, he will. "And, Bella, yeah, you. You're what I want."

Her face melts into the tenderest expression of gratitude and affection. "I'll take it," she whispers.

He grabs her with one arm and pulls her in for a hug, exhaling loudly. "Fucking hell. Good."

After a time of rocking and cradling each other, she looks up at him. His eyes are clear and his face, relaxed.

"Thank you for saying that." She knows, now, how difficult it was for him to show his hand.

He doesn't know how to reinforce his claims and wonders if he'll ever succeed. But he'll try.

"I mean it." The three words come out lame, but they're walking to new meaning and, for now, it's all he has.

"I know."

A long while ago (it seems like forever) before the madness set in, he disclosed the singular weight he puts on his heart and the language it speaks.

She recalls the memory for the first time, like finding the musty pages of a wet book, heavy, but no less filled with all the answers.

"How hard was it?" she asks, accepting that it will take time for more.

His eyes narrow at the light teasing. "Easy, after I got it out. And after you hushed."

She taps her forehead on his chest, smiling.

"I'm glad you have it in you," she says cautiously.

He chuckles. "Yeah, me too."

His heartbeat is at her temple. His chest hair tickles her ear. He's such a boy, and up until now, it dawns on her how uncertain she's left him, how confused.

She can't help the verbal tic, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He won't let her continue this when she's opened the door for them, fought, and set a course he's curious to take on. She needs to laugh. "It's in your nature."

"What?"

"You're a she-devil. Causing me distress and driving me crazy. I should lock you up, the things you do to me. I should get you a straightjacket."

"Or two," she responds, thinking how discombobulated she's made him, too.

He squeezes her hard as if it will make her shut up about it. She squeaks.

"Now what?"

He brings her face up and gives her his own wicked grin, bending down and planting it on her neck. "Now you make it up to me."

**XxX**

They spend the night talking.

That is after they make out in his kitchen like teenagers – alive on the thrill of revelation – up against the refrigerator. He pins her with his hips and when she needs to breathe, he comes up like a synchronized swimmer and dives back in, relentless, and reveling in the sensation of his lungs burning for her. When she trails her hand down his chest, he traps it right at the elastic of his thermals and rubs it across East to West, silently begging her to rediscover him.

That part, the kissing, is easy. Getting her to bed, and sucking on her lip like a boy with a Gummi worm is easy.

Turning her mind off, however, is not.

It starts with a simple question during tender nibbling, "What are you doing tomorrow?"

And between curious licks around a scar at the base of her scalp and ear, he ignores her for one of his own, "What happened here?" He runs a finger across the scar and he remembers wanting to ask her months ago, but was afraid the tale would include an intruder.

Her arm is crushed under his weight and she maneuvers it free. "Cliff-diving." She lifts her hair, offering a better view. "I slipped on the edge as I was going in and I faltered. A loose rock nicked me."

"Then what?"

And she tells him. It is a who-are-you type of night, lit by the glow of newfound discovery. Like explorers, they take stock of the other, readying the lay of the land.

Their bodies have spoken for months, and he's aware of her leg smoothing over his while she speaks of her dad and small-town shenanigans. He's impatient to know all of her.

She asks about his brother as he sets to work on her inside-elbow, and she's talking so much, he can't help but laugh at her. So he indulges her and breaks into a story about shattering his mother's china, and Emmett's love of scissors and sheets, and the ghost stories they made up when they were grounded and sent to their room.

Darkness pops with speech bubbles linking a makeshift love story with string, chance, and genuine curiosity.

They spend the night filling in the blanks with favorite Christmas gifts, favorite colors, pet names, best family holidays, dates, people, and other things reserved for gift-giving and platonic conversation.

They spend the night, secretly, watching the other sleep.

When he wakes before her, as he's trained himself to do, he does what he's always done. He hits the head. But this morning he does not dally. He goes back to bed to welcome her from dreaming.

This is not enough, he figures.

He wants his _more_.

He watches the rise and fall of her shoulders. She has stolen the covers again, and his back rests against the wrought-iron headboard.

Morning light, misty yellow, squeaks through and lands on her face. He doesn't bother to shade her.

The back of her eyelids are a burnt orange. She squints with her eyes closed.

"I hate your coat," he blurts by way of good morning.

She's eaten a tadpole. "What?"

"I mean I want to get you a new coat. Something different."

Bella rolls on her back and shields her eyes with her arm. "Okay." She clears her throat. "Just make sure it's the same one."

"Different."

"No, the same." She leans up on her elbow. "Think of it as new, not different, okay? Just new. From you."

He fits his head in his hand, watching her roll onto her stomach, and narrowing her eyes to glimpse outside. The window is across the room and it's too bright to make out the furniture.

The collar of her shirt hangs low enough for him to peep at her cleavage.

"You're gonna fight this."

"Yes," she tells him without looking up. She can't believe how different the light looks in his loft. "When did it get so bright?"

"About an hour ago."

"Thank God. I have to go home and catch up on work."

"It's Saturday."

"And tomorrow's Sunday," she sighs, "and I still have papers to grade. And I'd like to wear my own clothes." She shoves his thigh.

When it flexes, she gulps.

"Do you now?"

He's got nothing on under the sheets. They didn't have sex last night and he was wearing his thermal underwear the last time she looked.

Does this man ever wear clothes?

Now she's distracted. From the looks of it, he's getting distracted, too.

She's shy of this man who stares intently into her eyes. "What?"

"Do you want your own clothes? Mine aren't good enough?"

He shifts so he his hovering over her. She twists at the spine to get a look at him.

There. That look. That look attached to that torso, linking the high and low of him, and she's flustered enough to sweat between her firm thighs.

There's nothing new about that look. She learned it a long time ago.

He continues, gruff. "Since you have such low regard for my clothes…_Miss_." He grins. "Then perhaps you should give them back."

She can smell his wakened skin, sticky from sleep, and she wants to know because he never answered. "What are you doing today?"

"You."

"And the day after that?"

"You," he says, playing. "You on Monday, You on Tuesday, on Wednesday and on Thursday."

"You forgot the rest of the week."

"No. You're doing me the rest of the week."

She beams at him, ready for this, whatever it is. However it is.

She thinks wickedly that she wants him messy and wild.

He wants her grinding and burning.

It is morning-sex – a first of firsts.

With her earlobe in his mouth, he tells her dirty things and accuses her of snatching the covers in her sleep. She hums into his shoulder and bites.

His body's posture is at its worst when he's above and inside her. His spine curves into her. The edges of him (shoulders, knees, ankles) fold themselves into her.

For Bella, this is what it means to be buried and buried willingly.

His strokes, languid and reaching are slow, for he has all the time in the world.

He takes her hands, weaves his fingers in, and brings them up to the headboard where they grip together.

He shows her what he has not yet earned the right to tell her. She finds no fear here.

But while his hips kiss her hips, and his lips graze her lips, she feels him tense and stall. "What's wrong?"

Her legs, wrapped around him, tighten into a hug and he stutters out a ragged apology "about last night" because he can't shake it off and she needs him to.

"Shh. I wasn't unwilling," she assures him with a squeeze. "But take me with you next time."

"Next time." She repeats in kisses along his shoulder, broad and silken.

"Bella." He rocks back into rhythm, grateful for her bravery.

She thrusts up into him in reassurance.

"Shh. Don't go crazy, Edward. My poor, poor man. I'm right here."

He laughs, in danger of coming loose from her, because it's not something you hear when you're inside your lover. He has no shame and acceptance is freeing. "Oh, sweetheart, I've come and gone. There's no hope for me now."

His tongue finds hers and makes her mouth sloppy for him.

He peeks when he kisses and finds that she does, too. They smirk, watching the other. At her parted lips, he goes in for deep.

The lovemaking is sensual and hot, fucking and loving, depending on the placement of a thumb (in his mouth) or knees (bucking against the mattress) or their mouths (anywhere it is slick).

She arches. Her blood rushes. Her belly pumps in anticipation.

And _more_ becomes the filthiest four-letter word for the insanity she knows is coming, with another pass of his teeth on her collar, the hard brush of his heavy thighs between her quaking ones, the grunt of promise passing from his chest to hers.

He is fucking making love to her, and she tips over the line into that velvet place where love and lust are one and the same because she trusts them to be.

She gives him the green light. "Flip me over."

He smiles steam on her nipples and says no. He's here, too, and can do one better.

They have a long way to go, and where to start overwhelms him, but not now.

Not here.

He needs to start somewhere. He has to start with what he knows.

He pulls up on his knees, twisting her torso high, and her tummy skin pulls like taffy. One hand on her ass and the other palming the base of them, he watches her eyes roll back.

"Edward," she groans, arching into place like a good girl.

Fuck, she loves this.

"Bella."

He licks his lips and slides in sweetly. Her foot presses against his shoulder.

She answers him, guttural. "This is my favorite."

Yes, this much, this much he knows.

* * *

A/N:

WriteOnTime and Cesca Marie took time out of their busy holiday schedules to beta this chapter. I'd thank them under the mistletoe, if I could.


	15. In A Future Age

****In A Future Age****

**XxX**

Bella

I know when he's awake and making coffee because my nose tickles and my feet are cold under the covers. I know when we're out of coffee because the grinder whirrs lonely without beans, and I hear him shuffling in the hall closet for shoes and a jacket, and the front door swings and shuts in 3…2…1.

He hates coffee.

While he's out, I know he'll pick up the paper and a horrible energy drink for himself. He'll leave the front page for me and take the sports page with him into the bathroom. It bothers me that he leaves them there.

Rolling over, I take his pillow and smoosh my smiling face into it and hug it tightly. It's going to be a long day and I hate it. Today we travel.

Our maps are ready. I've researched. I didn't write up an itinerary. That would have made him pissy. He hates schedules, deadlines; he puts things off until the last moment.

I can hear the door open and Edward knock about in another room. He's loud for a quiet guy. This new place has stripped walls, and the creaky floorboards that need to be replaced (along with so much other work we have to do) speak to our whereabouts.

This would be a terrible place for hide and seek, and I smile at that, too.

Some days, when it seems like I'm playing house again – folding laundry, straining pasta, unloading groceries – I wonder why it is so much easier the second time around. The same styled chores have never been quite fulfilling. I can't believe how much I like ironing now; it's stupid. But I like taking his slacks, and dress shirts, snapping them open and ironing them flat, folding the creases, straight and perfect.

I know that I've never been this happy, this certain. I've earned this. I worked hard for it. I moved past a lot of my own insecurities (a constant struggle anyway) to accept this, and Edward, and his way of love.

It was hard in the beginning. I didn't think it was going to be. It was.

We wore a path between his loft and my apartment. Quickly, we shed our stuff in both places, mixing them up - forgetting a hair clip on his nightstand or a pair of running shoes under my bed.

One night, alone, I threw a fit when I saw his shampoo left in my shower. I wouldn't speak to him for days and didn't take his phone calls until he showed up at three in the morning, angry. I stomped through my place, to the back, turned left, into the bathroom and pushed aside the shower curtain.

I pointed.

His face, beautiful and bewildered, took in the dark angular bottle next to my lavender and mossy green shower goods. He dug in his pocket and took my hand. I opened it, and in my palm sat my favorite earrings, glittering up at me. They were left at his place, he had said. His mouth was grim and his eyes questioned me.

I didn't have an answer for him, but I realized right then and there that I was balancing between the newly-independent me and real love.

We talked about it. He was patient with me and forthcoming: "I want no one else. I don't want you to change. I'm not going anywhere."

Now why did I cry when it dawned on me that I could have everything?

True love, earned, of effort: I know the difference now.

There was nothing wrong with Jake. He did nothing wrong but try to make me happy, while I sat idle and unable. Then he gave up. I gave up. I think about it because I have something to set this happiness against. To be content is one thing; to be blaring full-on with sunshine from the inside out is something else entirely.

On those days, I wonder if knowing who you cannot love, opens you up for who you can.

Edward.

Edward, I've found to be passionate, but steadfast. He's unlike any other, his own brand of man, following no one else's rules. I tell him I love him. He doesn't say it back. He's told me why, and I think he's crazy. But I don't worry; I don't second-guess. He shows, doesn't tell. He's action. He's boutique and specially made for me. Which is good because he thinks I'm made for him, too.

He calls me 'witchy woman' and claims that I've cast a spell on him. He thinks I'm nuts. But I blame him: he likes to walk around in his underwear.

I remember the other night, and I work a palm under me, pressing into my itch. It's delicious, the way he leaves me satiated and wanting all at once. He called me at work and made a joke to keep me from flying off the handle and killing co-workers.

I arrived home – weary – to the dark. He had a bath running, tea lights in mason jars. I followed their flickering shadows from room to room until I spotted him, waiting for me.

We slipped, slid in our clawfoot tub – shaped like a cupped hand. I like being settled between his legs, and no matter how often we do this slippery and sloppy dance, there's a wicked sensation between my legs. I squirmed around to get comfortable, and it was hard and wicked between his legs, too.

Water splashed into the mason jars. Tea candles bobbed up like little ships in the night, and spilled over. We left puddles on the bathroom floor, tracking soapy footprints through our house, and fell on the bed, soaking it wet.

He dried me with his tongue and his hands.

With me on top, his fingers spread me open from cheeks to lips and I felt the night air move through me, and Edward move in me. He likes to go slow and knead with thumbs everywhere. Our whispers were loving and hot. He pressed up and up and in until my skin itched, flushed.

He's more than keen on me. I know this.

It's what gets me up this morning, dreading the long journey, but I'm ecstatic that we're doing this together.

I make the bed. Our bed. Our wrought-iron bed kept from those days colored-in with gray. The bed hogs up a lot of space, but that's okay. What did it ever do to us?

**XxX**

Edward

She is still asleep, burrowed under the comforter. She sucks at sharing the covers. I let her sleep; it's going to be a long flight, a long trek. We have miles to go.

Check in, security, coffees, baggage claim, rental car, hotel, road trip, visit with flowers, more road trip, provisions, trailhead, hike, and set up the tent. It will be cold, and I know how she will shiver with that dramatic teeth-chattering of hers.

She'll get over it.

She always does.

I'm better at handling travel stress than she is; we've tested this.

But I'll warm her up. I fit her like a jacket she wants to rub on every part of her skin. Or so she tells me.

When we consolidated our belongings and moved in together, she gave me heartburn. Choose a paint color, let's pick furniture, throw out your this and your that, Edward. I kissed her when we argued about what belonged where, and she shut up. I was amazed that it worked.

I learn something new every day.

Down the street, five blocks, there's a coffee shop. The girl inside knows our order and starts it up with a smile as soon as she sees me. She gives me an extra sugar "swizzle" (her word) that looks like a stem, crystals on a vine. She's beaming at me. I have the sudden urge to look behind me, in case it's meant for someone else.

"To keep it sweet," she says, motioning to my coffees, and I thank her. "She'll love it," I say, because Bella will. The girl looks crestfallen. I want to tell her nothing should make her look that way, but I'm impatient to return to Bella. The coffee shop door chimes behind me.

I head for home.

I know she's waited to hear the words she tells me daily since we've moved in together. She thinks I'm not ready. My goofy, grinning girl. She's wrong. I've been waiting, patiently waiting, for her to catch up to this moment.

Like everything else in my life, I've been fucking certain for a long time, long before we were holed up in that God-awful snowstorm the weathermen are still trying to name.

She likened it to living in a snow globe once. I don't agree or disagree.

My silence only serves as caulking for the cracks in her memories. That's all right, I only care that I am in them.

I only care that she was brave enough for the both of us. How could I have known I was going to fall for her?

She fought.

I did not.

I let her go and she returned, fiery. She's been aflame ever since.

I don't know what would have happened if she hadn't come back. I like to think I would have gone after another man's girl, but the thought depresses me.

All the implications of it depress me, and I don't indulge nostalgia. For what? Who cares about a snowstorm or an ex named Jake? I've met him. He's old news now.

It's her I have my head together for. She doesn't make it easy. She's tough, but she breaks or tries to make me break. No dice, girl.

She's my madness. At times, I call her while she's at work. Her cell is cradled between her ear and neck, I can tell from the cadence in her voice, the shuffling papers on the other end, the students coming and going. I call her to say hello, see how her day is going, to fluster her.

At least, that's what she thinks.

I don't say much. She complains about parents protesting over lesson plans and administrators loading her up with work. I don't say much, I just want to listen and make sure she's still there. It's akin to pinching myself, except it's her voice on the other end of the line, telling me when she'll be home, and what we're having for dinner.

I don't care about dinner. I like the part where she says dirty shit, quietly, as her students file in.

She thinks I'll blush?

Instead, I remain quiet. When she thinks she has me speechless, I slacken my throat until it's dark and heavy. "I want you on your knees, sucking my cock, baby. Take it all - "

She hangs up on me. I laugh.

It works every time. She's too easy. What crazy parents and overbearing co-workers? All thoughts are on me now, and how she probably wants to fuck me and smack me.

It's stunning how one minute she owns the conversation, and the next she's shaking. I picture her trying not to laugh or be conscious of her wet panties while greeting her students, chalk screeching on the board.

We do this all the time, tease, have fun, make light. Ever since we opened up our baggage, took stock, looked at each other and burned what could be burned, salvaged what needed remembering, the world loosened up. We loosened up.

Here we are. She is up and about – readying her face, her tits and her ass for a flight – in loungewear that's meant for me to eye-fuck. It works, but I'm not always that easy. I keep her on her toes, too.

It rattles and infuriates her and I take amusement in it. She over-thinks, but much less now that she is with me.

She lets me think for her, the little things, like where are her shoes, her keys.

Here we go. We're always delayed looking for them as she mumbles to herself, putting on her earrings, her sweater.

I know where her shoes are. They're under the bed because I took them off her feet last night before I pushed her into the mattress with my body.

Her keys are in the pockets of her jeans, also under the bed. This, after I tugged them off of her and pushed her open, putting my face directly over her cotton panties, where I breathed into her like she was a balloon. Her mouth squeaked out these brilliant noises that made me smile.

I held my breath and let my tongue do the work. I used my fingers then exhaled so it came out like a hot wind directly where she likes it. I did it on purpose and I don't think she knew this. I did it some more.

I adjust myself because there's no time for that. I have plans. She's in those plans. She doesn't know this.

Not yet.

Just like she does not know that I watch her frantically look in all the wrong places for her things until it's almost time to go. I take pity and find them for her, put them in her hands, and usher her out the door with a smack on her tush.

She fakes irritation but lightens up when she sees I have our bags ready and her coffee in a mug. She asks me why I "hate" her because I don't think she's entirely sure if she uses the other word, I'll say it back.

_I'll say it back, Bella._

I turn her around before she reaches the door. My brother pulls up outside, ready to take us to the airport and send us on our first vacation to the place where we should have met, but didn't. We're going to pay respect to her parents, and then I'm taking her to the spot I've dreamt about making love to her.

Knowing her, she'll turn it filthy. I'm counting on it.

She's surprised when I snatch her by the coat pocket and put my arms around her.

Her eyes accuse me of being up to no good. "What's up? Hey, you didn't shave." She's easily distracted and rubs her forehead on my chin.

"I want to try something." She cringes back suspiciously, waiting for teasing words. She squirms and I hold her closer. "Hold still."

At first, she listens with her ears. I lean in and kiss her softly. Then her body listens when I whisper, "I love you."

She pulls back in my arms and regards me with what must be her dad's cop-eyes, and cracks a beautiful crazy-girl grin. I beam my own. She's fucking infectious.

"You're kidding!"

"No!" I laugh, trying to pull her in, but she's resisting me.

"Really, Edward. You're not joking? Cause you can't take it back, you know."

Ever the fighter.

"Oh, I know."

"I mean you really, really can't!" she emphasizes with her fists.

I twirl her around and she squeals and runs out the door, yelling that she loves Edward Cullen, and jumping on a startled Emmett like she's been told she won the best pony at the state fair.

A while back – I don't care how long it's been – a while back I would have had a heart attack thinking about those words and the implications. But she makes it easy. Easy to do everything we've done together: the family, the awkward dinners with her old friends (we've given up on those), the move, the house.

We're in this together. Just Bella and I, and I feel fucking powerful for it. Powerful.

Emmett gives me the look. "Yeah?" he confirms while she climbs in the back seat so she can lie down and chat away.

"Yeah." I tell him. He shakes his head. I know what he's thinking before he does. Mom's going to lay in on him even more now. She wants mates for both her sons.

"Figures," he mumbles and hugs me. He taps me twice on my fast beating heart. "Let's do this."

We climb into the car and pull out of the driveway where mid-Autumn leaves litter the street. They match the color of the sky and my girl's laughter.

**XxX**

A Singular Moment

They're in a bookstore, browsing. She reads a line from a favorite love poem: "Some have won a wild delight/By daring wilder sorrow/Could I gain thy love to-night/I'd hazard death to-morrow."

He nods dutifully, though he thinks it's a horrible poem. But what does he know?

He heads for Non-Fiction.

"Wait, don't you like it?"

"Sure, it's pretty," he lies. What's the point of being honest when it'll delay getting her to his loft? She'll want to talk about it.

A man in a three-piece suit powers by with last-minute miscellaneous gifts in his arms. He slows down when he walks past Bella. Edward takes her hand and pulls her into the Travel section. She yelps in surprise; she picks up the pace.

His fingers trace along the spines of trade paper stories belonging to other people.

"It's pretty," she mimics him, displeased and aware he doesn't share her love for it.

He hears her, but continues to ignore her. He thumbs through a chronicle of a crashing plane, glass flying, and turbulent wind.

He's on page: "The last horror he witnessed was the gaping hole in the plane. The jet stream pulled his little girl's smile into the ether."

It makes him shiver.

"There's a 'but' there."

She won't drop it and he puts the book back, in the wrong place, and regards her for a moment before answering.

Why not, he thinks. What's the harm?

It's their fourth or fifth encounter, he doesn't care to remember, but every time it's like he's coming home to a concentrated version of himself – a pinpoint of a dotted line.

He came straight from the airport, and although a bookstore is not where he wants to be after a long flight, he finds that it doesn't matter, so long as he gets to see her.

His parents want to see him, they've called enough, and Jasper's left him a few messages. His editor wants a re-write of his expedition, the failed one, and the deadline is in a matter of days. He hardly cares; he's so caught up with her.

And what's the harm, this isn't forever. She is wholly transient.

He's convinced himself into buying one truth, since he can't afford the one he wants.

Today, her hair is up in a scientist knot speared by two chopsticks. She wears a turtleneck, and he tries not to stare through the wool. She told him she just got out of work. She does look tired and other unidentifiables that have nothing to do with him.

"There's no 'but'."

"But," she presses, leaning back against a cherry wood table, crossing legs over ankles, arms over arms; challenging.

The sky behind her is a stream of inconstant blues on a sunny, cloudy day.

"I've never told a woman I loved her."

"What do you mean? Everyone says 'I love you' at some point. Their high-school sweetheart or a childhood friend." She speaks to him patiently and with an undisguised level of amusement.

Although she is not entirely surprised, most men hold back on the words for fear of commitment. But everyone wavers and throws an 'I Love You' out into the world at least once, hoping for it to latch on to someone worthy of it.

But not Edward. In the short time she's known him, she's learned that he keeps his emotions in check. She can't help wanting to draw them out of him, but if she's honest with herself, she's happy not knowing everything about Edward. The way he looks at her.

Not yet.

He tells her. "I don't have a problem with it, if that's what you think. It's a personal choice."

But Edward is not most men, and thinking of the words 'Edward' and 'commitment' both thrills and frightens her all at once, in the way one gets at the top of the roller coaster.

"Why hold those words so dear?" She shouldn't be so curious about the private man, but she can't stop picking at the splinter of his confession.

She sits in a chair.

He squats on his haunches to be closer to eye-level. Her chest stares back; he looks into her eyes.

"I figure," he starts slowly, "if I ever feel like I need to say those words, it has to mean forever. Otherwise, what's the point? Otherwise, why bother? They're not meant for anyone else. Just the one."

Her silent smile is slow to spread. She still doesn't really understand, but it's him and he's so sincere. She runs a hand through his hair.

He takes her hand and presses it along his cheek, wishing he weren't explaining this to the one he loves.

He closes his eyes. Her smile is sad.

-FIN-

* * *

_for bigp_

The poem Bella reads is "Passion" by Charlotte Bronte

'In A Future Age' is a song by Wilco. Check it out.

I thank my betas for everything and I thank you for reading. Send me a note and let me know you were once here.

Cheers,  
denverpopcorn


End file.
